


They Call This Closure?

by hes5thlazarus



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Classism, Deconstruction, F/F, F/M, Fantastic Racism, Fascism, Female Friendship, Gen, Long-Delayed Coming of Age, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Marauders' Era, Peggy Sue, Queer Themes, Queerplatonic Relationships, Racism, Slow Burn, banality of evil, but people fall in and out of many kinds of love, romantic love is not any character's endgame
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2018-09-13 10:43:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 64,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9120151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hes5thlazarus/pseuds/hes5thlazarus
Summary: Severus comes to consciousness into a dream of Potter reenacting his worst memory-and then Lily Evans comes tearing in at age sixteen, rather than as the more mature adult his subconscious normally designs her. They call this closure?





	1. So, Not a Wet Dream Then

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s Note: Always wanted to try my hand at the old Peggy Sue Snapefic. I’ve always been bothered by the frankly abusive dynamics of most Snape/Lily fanfics, so here’s my attempt at portraying Snape trying for balance. He never really got a chance to grow up and get closure from Hogwarts--so I’m using fanfic to give him a chance.  
> Disclaimer: I don’t own anything about this story but the framing and styling of the narrative. Up-All-Night Potion comes from rabbit-and-jinx, I think, “If Ewe Be Prepared.”  
> Content Warning: Discussion of Sirius Black’s comment, “Lucius’ lapdog.” No pedophilia, but mention of pedophilia and sexual assault.

 

They Call This Closure?

 

Severus opened his eyes, suddenly wrenched upside-down by the familiar tug of a  _ Levicorpus _ spell. His thoughts immediately went to Lupin, to Black, they must have told fucking  _ Potter _ . He thought suddenly, sharply,  _ Liberacorpus! _ and rolled smoothly onto his feet, wand out, as he reached the ground once more.

“Potter!” he barked. “Your wand!” A wordless disarming spell had it neatly in his hand, he needed to  _ finite incantatum _ it, he could definitely get that fucking brat expelled and hopefully banished to Grimmauld Place, where he would be safe and out of his hair. When his lackeys began to sputter--sounding like the Weasleys, it must be the Twin Terrors--he whirled around and was faced with a fifteen-year-old Sirius Black. Fucking Padfoot, Potter must have Floo’d him somehow and summoned him here--what were they going to do about Umbridge?

“Oh, what the fuck,” he said. Then Potter jumped on his back, and Severus busied himself with slamming his suddenly-revived enemy’s face into the lovely spring grass of the Hogwarts lawn. He had dreamed of this moment. Mostly it ended with him being stripped and his penis falling off, but this was a nice new twist. He punched Potter, just because he felt like it. Black shot a stinging hex at him, and he blocked it lazily. Now he was having fun.

“Sev!” a heartbreakingly familiar voice called. “Leave them alone, you’re better than this!” Severus whirled around and gaped. Lily Evans sat there, face aflame with rage. The sun made her eyes glitter--was she tearing up? Merlin save him.

“What the fuck,” Severus repeated. Maybe she would strip. He inspected her: no, still sixteen. They only went sexual when she appeared closer to his age. Wary, he took a step back, right into Black’s headlock, and when Potter jumped to help in he knew no more.

He woke up in the Hospital Wing, sore and displeased. He did not feel like he had just been tortured, had Longbottom blown up another cauldron and he wasn’t quick enough with a vanishing spell? He kept his eyes closed, checking first if he had all his limbs, then gingerly lifted his hands to check his face. Pulling himself to sit, he opened his eyes, moving his jaw. It felt strange.

“Madam Pomfrey took care of your teeth pretty well, Sev,” Lily commented.

Severus stared. She was still sixteen. Good Lord, this was no fun. He tried to will her older: no change. So much for a nice Muggle pornography scene. She wasn’t even showing cleavage.

“You alright?” Lily slid off the chair and leaned towards him. The concern in her eyes was touching.

“What?” Severus blinked. She touched his forehead lightly, avoiding his hair. He felt the touch as if it were real, and, embarrassingly, shivered. “Longbottom must have substituted the powdered mugwort with claviceps-rye.” He looked around. “A tincture of valerian should counter any tremors--”

“What’s Frank have to do with this?” Lily demanded. “Honestly, Sev, you’re talking nonsense. Sit down! You’re lucky McGonagall came in when Potter stepped in on your face, I was afraid what they’d expel you if they saw you punching him--”

“Normally you’re less chatty than this,” Severus commented distractedly, pushing her away and heading straight to the medicine cabinet. “Passionflower? It would compliment the ergot.” He stared at the ordering of the potions. None of them were labeled with his handwriting. She couldn’t have used up his stock that quickly, they were barely a month into the school year.

Behind him he heard Lily huff. “Severus, listen to me! Sit back down! You’re the one being-- _ chatty _ . That concussion must have whacked the sense out of you.” Slowly, Severus turned around. Astonishment lit his eyes and softened his features. He held a hand out to touch her.

“This  _ is _ real,” he breathed, grasping her arm. He laughed. “Or Longbottom’s outdone himself. I could market this!”

Lily pinched him and snapped her fingers in his face. “You really do need that valerian,” she decided. “You’re being weird.”

Severus took hold of both her arms. “Does a man dream he is a butterfly or is he a butterfly dreaming that he is a man dreaming?”

“Weird,” Lily sighed, “why do you always get this weird when you’ve been fighting? Were you brewing before the test? You know Up-All-Night potion could count as cheating, right?” She narrowed her glorious eyes. “It’s never made you hallucinate before. Or chatter. What were you saying about passionflower? Leaf or root?”

He hugged her. Alarmed, she pulled back. “Okay, we need to get Madam Pomfrey to do a full scan. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“I’m alive,” he breathed. “I’ve got a chance.”

Lily’s expression suddenly turned from suspicious to empathetic. “Oh, Severus.” She maneuvered him back to the bed. Dumbly, he let her. “That toerag must’ve gotten to you. You don’t deserve all this shit, you know. Existing shouldn’t be a punishment.”

Severus stretched back onto the bed, head in his arms, and let her lecture him. He couldn’t stop a small smile from playing on his lips as he watched her first try to give him a pep talk, then diagnose him, then just rant about how stupid Potter and his gang were. The rant was interspersed with references on how much more maturely he acted than they did: he hoped so, he was thirty-four and though often accused of pettiness, did try to act like an adult. He wondered if he should be concerned that a sixteen-year-old girl just told him she was glad he was acting her age. Then he realized: fuck, he was a teenager again.

Poppy stepped in. “What did you do this time?” she snapped.

“I’m a teenager,” Severus said dolefully.

“I think he’s hallucinating,” Lily said. “He said something about passionflower and ergot, but he won’t say if it’s leaf or root. Er, and claviceps-infected rye. James Potter hit him rather hard and Sirius Black choked him badly.”

Poppy huffed. “Well, he’s not concussed, I’ve checked for that. Stay where you are!” Severus had been trying to slip off the bed unnoticed.

He scowled. “If I’m not concussed, why am I here?”

“You haven’t been taking any potions in preparation for your exams?”

Severus stared at her flatly. If he had, would he tell her? “Nothing but Up-All-Night Potion and a couple amphetamines.”

“What amphetamines?”

Severus grabbed his bag and slipped away, wand in his hand. He left the Hospital Wing and walked the corridors, cheap leather boots slapping the cobbles. There was a hole worn under his right toe, but luckily his socks were darned well, so he could not feel the cold. Head high, shoulders back, he ignored the whispers and giggles of the portraits, the odd looks from passing students and ghosts.

“Ooh, you look like you’ve got your knickers twisted right up your arse, Snivellus, has Lucius Malfoy told you he’s dropping you for Narcissa? I heard she gives better head,” sneered a Gryffindor girl, a younger Marlene McKinnon. Severus halted. He had last seen her in Rabastan Lestrange’s wine cellar in 1979, Petrified and stuck to a target. Rabastan, Regulus, and Crouch, in typical elite excess, had been shooting champagne corks at her, charming them to lacerate when they hit skin. She had died of blood loss. He had been tasked with disposing of the body. He had left her on the beach in Allonby. Avery had cast the Mark.

Then he processed what she said. Why did everyone assume he was fucking Lucius? Lucius had been fifteen and Severus eleven when they met, people were disgusting. Severus remarked, “I wonder about your House’s fixation on my sexual habits, particularly on insisting on these allegations of child sexual abuse--because, since you care so much, if Lucius and I had been involved while he was at Hogwarts, it would have been by definition statutory rape. I... _ acknowledge _ your concern for any distress you think I would have if my hypothetical rapist dropped me for a witch his own age, but must request that you STOP BEING FUCKING DISGUSTING, do you  _ think _ rape is funny? Do you really take rape so lightly, to be accusing people so publicly?” Marlene was spooked, backing away. Severus continued, “Really, I wonder at your spirit of victim-blaming, too. Lucius was  _ fifteen _ and I was  _ eleven _ when we met, I was fucking  _ thirteen _ when he left Hogwarts. But,” he sneered, “I will let Lucius and Narcissa know about your interest.” Marlene was staring at him. A collection of medieval maidens were all crouching at the bottom of their frame, to listen better. He scowled again. “Now fuck off.”

Of course his stride had changed in the twenty years since he had been a student and learned to be an authority figure, since he had dabbled in murder and mastered intimidation. He had spent his schooldays nervy and nervous, head bowed, eyes ceaselessly searching for danger, drinking too much coffee and eating too little. He felt sick, remembering the rumors that had got about--Lucius’ little lapdog lapping up treats was the worst, but there was one that his father had been an Inferius, another that his mother was a vampire, another that he washed his hair with his own sweat and washed his teeth with urine. Black had spread most of them, Potter laughing them into credibility. He snarled at a trio of first year Ravenclaws that were blocking his way towards his quarters; they scattered, terrified. He hated that rumor about him and Lucius. Slytherin was very careful about protecting its younger students; God, he remembered that horrible investigation in 1987 about one of his Slytherin first years and a Ravenclaw sixth year with a taste for dark magic and tantric sex. He had to call in a favor from Horace to force Filius to pressure Dumbledore into expelling the student. Pomona, at least, had helped in arranging counselling for his first year--Merlin, it was awful.

Severus slowed at the tucked-away dead end that lead to his quarters.“Valerian and wormwood,” he said to the suit of armor, that acted as his gatekeeper. It lifted its visor, to mime taking a closer look at him. He scowled: fifth year, right. Fuck.

“Sev!” It was Lily, still sixteen, huffing as she hurried down the corridor. He regarded her dolefully. In his dreams, she made a beautiful adult woman. She was still a remarkably pretty girl. She hadn’t had a chance to become a beautiful adult woman. His fault, his fault, always. She skittered to a stop in front of him. “Jesus, Severus, you really rushed out of there. You really freaked Marlene out--I told her off, for spreading that  _ dreadful _ lie--but Up-All-Night Potion? You know that doesn’t exist, right?”

“Doesn’t exist,  _ yet _ ,” he said wistfully: an old joke. “For now, coffee will suffice.”

“Yeah, well, the tea they serve here is shit,” Lily scowled. “Watery and weak. As if we don’t have exams.” She grabbed his arm; he flinched back. “But, seriously, are you alright? You know Potter’s a toerag--”

“I feel like a thirty-five year old man in a sixteen year old’s body,” Severus said. “Do we have any more exams?”

“Oh, come on, you can’t be that out of it, DADA’s the last--but, really, Sev, what’s gotten into you? I’ve never seen you walk so-- _ boldly _ in the halls. You normally--well--creep.”

Severus felt himself crumble suddenly. He slid against the wall and hid his face in hands, hair swinging to obscure his face. What happened to his Occlumency? Oh, right, puberty. “Lily, why aren’t you with your girlfriends right now? You followed them after the test.” He had obsessed over that day, over how she had ignored him up until he’d made a spectacle of himself, and then smirked when he had his pants down--almost literally.

“Well, that’s because you’re a right bitch to be around after tests, obsessing over your answers, you know it drives me mad.” She was starting to sound cross rather than concerned. “And I have a right to spend my time with whomever I wish, whenever I please, you really don’t have the place to sneer at me for being with my other friends, you’re always with... _ Mulciber _ and that crowd.”

“Well, you’re always with Potter and that gang,” Severus snapped.

“We’re in the same  _ House _ ! And he’s obsessed with me!”

“Well, same with me!” To his horror, his voice broke. “I wish I could fucking avoid them now, you’re right, they’re disgusting people. But I  _ sleep in the same room as them _ , Lily. Potter only teases you. Mulciber would snap my wand if he didn’t think he could use it.” He had thought up these excuses, agonized over them. “And Avery’s a decent guy. Mulciber’s the violent one.”

“What, like the Sirius Black to my James Potter?”

“I wish you wouldn’t say ‘my James Potter.’”

“Why?”

Severus looked at her, her heavy dark red hair, her impossibly green eyes, her impossibly young face. It was so unformed. He wanted to just touch it, platonically, lovingly, in awe of its innocence.“I felt that--that you’ve been flirting with him, sometimes.” Sometimes he had wanted to slap it. “When he’s been--bothering me.” So incoherent, what was he, sixteen again? Apparently.

Lily went very still. “You’re jealous,” she said quietly.

“You deserve better than him,” he said, “than him harassing you, than him harassing me to get to you--and sometimes I’m afraid it’s working. I...care for you a great deal, Lily. You’ve always seen the best in me. But if you can see it in me, you can see it in him too.”

“It’d be a real shit thing to do, going out with the guy who bullies my childhood best friend.”

Yes, Severus thought, it would be. It had been. It had been such a shitty thing to do, to hammer in how worthless she considered him. They fell silent. A couple students passed by, chatting about exams. A ghost--the Bloody Baron--glided past, glancing at them as he went.

“Mary thinks you fancy me,” Lily remarked.

His heart leapt. Bloody hell, she was sixteen. He was sixteen. Normally, if a student was so presumptuous to attempt to tease a feeling out of his, he would snarl them into celibacy and feelings of disgust and inadequacy for three years. Tulip Parkinson still hadn’t gotten married, and she was in her mid-twenties now--in the future--whenever. Was he in an alternate universe?

“What do you think?” he grunted.

“I think you fancy me better than I actually am.”

“Probably.” He had happily idealized her in their youth, hated her in his young adulthood, and pitied her when he finally felt grown. Had he loved her? “I don’t know if I love you, though.”

“Too judgemental and naive?”

“Do you love me?”

“Of course I do. I’ve known you since we were eight. But that doesn’t mean I like you most of the time. Just some of it.”

“I’m not evil,” he said. “I’m an arsehole. I hate it here.” He was crumbling again. “I hate it here at Hogwarts, I want to leave, I’m wasting away here--this place is killing me, Lily, killing me.” He grabbed her hand. She looked frightened, but let him hold onto her. “I’m so out of my depth, I’m going to fail you, I can’t stand the Potter brat, I’m terrified they’re going to find out, or that they’re going to think I’m playing both sides, that Dumbledore will believe them and leave me high and dry,  _ I don’t want to die _ ! I don’t want to go to Azkaban!” He was hyperventilating now. “I want to get the fuck out of here, go to the States, Australia, New Zealand, India--I had apprenticeships! Offers! I had a chance, and I threw it away, they took it from me, I couldn’t get it back.” He released her abruptly. “Now I don’t know what to do.”

“Sev,” Lily said gently, “do you want a Calming Potion?”

To his horror, he began to cry. “They call this closure?” he wept.


	2. Definitely a Nightmare

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is meant to be a deconstruction of the trope of Peggy Snape’s Worst Memory, or Snape going back in time to convince Lily to love him. He’s thirty-six (I made some mistakes in the timeline in the first chapter), and she’s just sixteen--and he’s been a teacher for eighteen years. He wouldn’t be able to do his job as the one young male staff member effectively if he were attracted to children. Lily is a child. Severus is just childish.  
> Disclaimer: Don’t own anything, and I owe a lot to the writers in my favorite authors tab on my profile.  
> Content Warning: Deliberating mirroring American white nationalist discourse with Severus’ Slytherin classmates.

Severus spent the last week of term hiding, which was not a major deviation from how he had originally spent them, holed up in his dormitory, sparring with Mulciber and Wilkes and pouring over texts from the Restricted Section with Avery. It was almost relaxing--they hadn’t changed much, but for Wilkes being in Azkaban. Their humor was perhaps a more bit more grossly sexual, but even then it hadn’t been unusual for his eyes to narrow and for him to snap at them, when they crossed the line between edgy and just disgusting. They drank a lot. Severus didn’t--he had gone on a bit of a bender after Lily died, for all of two days, tried to teach a class hungover, and never overindulged without the hair of the dog ever again. Minerva had laughed at him.  
Sitting on his bed, watching Wilkes and Mulciber mess around with dark magic, he felt old. If he had caught one of his Slytherins practicing an Entrails-Expelling Curse on a Hufflepuff muggleborn’s cat, he would have gotten them suspended for a year and sent to work at Charity Burbage’s cousin’s muggle herbalist apothecary. Didn’t they know dark magic was dangerous? Severus loved it, of course, always had, but for the more occult spells, whispers through a dark mirror smeared with blood that would follow one to the grave (or at least until the caster’s patience ran out), shadows that could reach out and strangle but took one’s dreams in response. This was just disgusting--though he did use that particular curse to disembowel dehorned erumpents. He was beginning to understand why Lily had dropped him as a friend.

On the Express back to King’s Cross, he avoided Mulciber, Avery, and Wilkes, sitting with Evan Rosier and his circle of inscrutable upper class purebloods instead--Augustus Rookwood, Narcissa Black, and Thorfinn Rowle, all seventh years, most of them headed straight to the Dark Lord’s inner circle. They had become his friends; Rookwood had helped Lucius recruit him, tantalizing him with rare Potions ingredients and enigmatic hints about the artifacts he worked with, in the Department of Mysteries. Had Lily ever understood why he loved dark magic? It was the greatest fulfillment of the most disturbing of muggle fairy tales. The Dark Lord knew it, Dumbledore understood it too. He had missed Albus.

In the quiet compartment, full of Slytherins pondering their futures--marriage and magic, darkness and blood--Severus wondered what exactly was going on. He didn’t think he was in a coma--everything was too tactile, time moved too slowly--nor did he think he was hallucinating. Lily would be more mature and more naked, or Potter, Black, Pettigrew, and Lupin would all have turned into werewolves and chased him around the castle if his subconscious was left to rule. And if it were some sort of dream, he thought it would give him more closure than it was--he wanted to know why Lily fucked James Potter, had a fucking child with him, died with him, when she claimed to hate everything people like him, people who were cruel bullies like him and Potter, stood for. She told him she loved him, he had known that for a long time, she had left him a letter before going into hiding, that was mostly full of anger and regret at being a witch in the first place. Of course they loved each other; they had grown up together, alone, the only ones able to make magic in that awful mill town, to walk atop of the mud of the river, to float around the smokestacks of the dying mill. But he didn’t think she meant it romantically. And if she had ever loved him, why did she fuck James Potter? He obsessed over it, worse than he did when he caught the Potter brat strutting around the halls, the very image of his father. What was happening to him?

Resting his head against the window, the typical Scottish going into English rain lashing against the glass, he tried to remember where he had been before the incident at the Lake. He had been heading off Umbridge to the Forbidden Forest, he had been at the Ministry, he had been enjoying a rare moment of peace, walking around the Lake late at night. Time had come unloosed. The past week, when he could fall asleep, he dreamed he had chased a doe through a Veiled archway while Sirius Black laughed. “He’s got Padfoot, at the place where it’s hidden!”--before he had found himself sixteen again, he was thirty-six at Hogwarts, Potions Master and youngest-ever (still!) Head of Slytherin House, researching the means through which dark magic corrupted the soul, and if a potion could stitch it back together. He had been at Hogwarts, that was he remembered, and blinked to find himself at Hogwarts as usual, just twenty years earlier. Somehow, it was all Potter’s fault. Through the Veil, chasing a doe--who the fuck was Padfoot?

“Severus, are you seeing Lucius at all, this summer?” Narcissa was saying. “Severus?”

He shook himself from his reverie. “Perhaps.” Not bloody likely, he didn’t have the money for the Knight Bus down to London and wasn’t sure if Apparition would set off the Trace. “Lucius had told me he was considering summering in Capreae this year.”

Narcissa smiled, the curl of the lips on a quiet Late Archaic statue. He had visited the Acropolis Museum about eleven years ago or so, in the most sensible part of his life, backpacking (and island hopping) through Greece to celebrate finally getting his ThD in herbal alchemy, and his first article on soul magic and potions being published without violating British law. Narcissa mirrored the slight livening of their features perfectly. For a second, he wanted to trace the curvature of her lips with his thumb. Taken aback, he leaned back. Stupid teenage hormones--that was rather gentle, for him, he had grown fond of her over the years.

Narcissa said, “Yes, but he’ll be in Wiltshire for Lughnasadh, at least. It’s a shame they don’t let us out early enough to celebrate Midsummer.”

Thorfinn growled, “Dumbledore’s an old fool, sacrificing our heritage to make the muds feel ‘safe’. How does he expect Wizarding society to survive, if we keep violating our very nature for the enemy! For the muggle! The muggle will win if we don’t stand our ground!”

Evan laughed. “Intergration, he thinks. Impossible without assimiliation. Look at America, and the problems the former colonies have with the Statute--”

Severus, exasperated, tuned into the conversation. They would continue to have this conversation for twenty years, except for Rosier, who would be dead in three. Their children would parrot their attitudes. He would be moderating outright racist discussions in the common room for the rest of his life, hiding his own Muggle heritage. At least he was less self-hating now.

He hadn’t clearly thought out what he would do when he returned to the Muggle world. Thatcherite England, particularly northern England, didn’t have too many jobs available. He could work for the mill or crash at his cousin’s place and work in the pits, like his father did a few years back. It’s not like he was looking for anyone’s respect but Lily’s, and Lily’s father was a manager at the Frank Dee supermarket in nearby South Shields and one of the few Tory voters he had ever met. What was going on with the world in 1976? Honestly, he hadn’t paid much attention the first time around, beyond being angry he was poor and dirty and hungry, being angry with Lily because she was less poor and clean and generally well-fed, better than him in this world and below him in the next.  
The train pulled into King’s Cross, and he said his good-byes to his Slytherin friends, shaking Rookwood’s hand and getting an unexpected, brief hug from Narcissa--he had put in several good words for her with Lucius, after all, but had she really been fond of him back then? He had thought she thought of him as a slight step above mudblood scum, but still not to be touched. It was a very brief hug. He offered her a hesitant nod and patted her arm awkwardly. The first time around, he had been sentimental--these seventh years were done, now. But now he knew he would never be able to get rid of them. But he had already disrupted the timeline--ah, fuck.

He waved Avery and the rest of his Slytherin yearmates off and headed to a quiet place to call the Knight bus. Maybe he would see Lily this summer. He hadn’t asked what she was planning to do; he had been too busy avoiding her. Merlin, he was thirty-six years old, and didn’t know how to be a friend to a sixteen year old girl--why the fuck would he want to be friends with a teenaged girl?  
The bus deposited him in the woods outside Cokeworth, for which he was grateful. He squared his shoulders and dragged his trunk, charmed to look like a duffel bag around Muggles, or so he told his classmates, towards town. The trunk was actually just a duffel bag, but what the purebloods didn’t know would probably kill them, because that included Mutually Assured Destruction and pollution. The Cold War was still going on, wasn’t it? Goddamn Maggie Thatcher.

Of course it rained. When he finally got to his house, he was soaked to the skin, shivering in his worn shoes. He really needed new boots. He rattled the doorknob, to no avail--the door was locked. Severus slouched down in the doorway and waited for someone to come home, rain dripping onto the greasy street, covering the dull brick with a new layer of grime. If this were a dream, it was definitely a nightmare.


	3. Teenage Wasteland

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trying to pick up the pace here. This one’s perhaps twice as long as the first two put together--I’d like to get through sixth year in two chapters, seventh in three, and then one long chapter on what comes next. Made Snape a Geordie because I’ve been watching too much Vera, like the accent, and the folk song “Geordie.” I’m placing Cokeworth in Tyne and Wear, north of Shiremoor. Shiremoor used to be a coalpit village, and abruptly turns rural a mile or so north--and it has Tyne river, so there's some canon support. It’s less than two miles away from South Shields, where I like to think of Lily’s father as commuting to work. Frustration with Snape’s hometown: the name refers to coal, but the street refers to a textile mill--well, J.K. likes to make names that allude to story, but not fact. There are some textile towns in Tyneside, but the ones Google showed me are mostly prosperous. That being said, I’m not even going to attempt dialect. Well, it’s fiction--and fan fiction at that.
> 
> Disclaimer: Would you look at that, I don’t own Harry Potter.
> 
> Content Warning: In-depth portrayal of child abuse, physical and emotional; abusive parents.

They Call This Closure?

Rain dredged slops into the gutter, disintegrating newspapers, used condoms, a syringe or two, the ever-present crawl of vomit. Severus practiced his Occlumency, listening to the dull drum of the rain. He was no longer verbalizing, but travelling through the maze of his mind, solving and resolving it from a jagged Hogwarts to the castle in the snow, windows blazing with fairy-light, Yule celebration well under way. He had hit upon the mind-castle when he had first found the Mens Sana text in the Restricted Section, researching ways to hold his temper and tame his nightmares--sometime in sixth year, it had been, and it was raining then too. Then Hogwarts had been dark, the windows cast greenish--he had set the atmosphere to feel like the humidity of the Slytherin common room, the oratory under the Lake.

The Dark Lord had loved it, as much as he could love anything; Severus suspected they organized their minds much the same way, and at the time had been flattered. Later, he had learned to be disturbed. The Dark Lord had taught him how to take that green, that feeling of moving under the water, of filtering light and sound through a Slytherin lens, and turn it towards everything, to muffle the rage. Dumbledore had ripped him from it and set him breathing outside again, taught him to enjoy the cold clarity of winter--blues and whites. When Harry Potter had come to the castle, he had been shocked, looking at his eyes. He had lost the vibrancy of that green.

Before the Dark Lord’s return, after Harry Potter, he had been practicing color, reintroducing the blare of sound. He had started getting migraines, started losing his shit at Gryffindors and younger years more often, especially if they had messy black hair and the most piercing green in his world; smells made him sick, the Potions classroom was a constant source of anxiety--in the Potter brat’s first year, leg throbbing, he had thrown up in a particularly noxious Hufflepuff-Ravenclaw fourth year class, the Wiggenweld Potion, after they had added the flobberworm mucus. 

He had been having a sort of nervous breakdown, he realized now. He had stopped caring about his House, about office hours, about publishing, about life outside of the UK, about leaving Hogwarts someday. Everything had turned white and black and green. When the Mark began to darken, he muffled sound underwater once more, and turned the world black and white--but for Harry Potter’s Avada Kedavra green eyes, unforgivable. Lily’s were gentle. The Dark Lord had seen him as an empty machine and took that despair as a mark of loyalty to him, the green as loyalty to Slytherin.

He focused on the brown of the brick of his house, the gray of the street, and listened to the rain, refusing to think. He was not even shivering. He was back at Spinner’s End, he was sixteen years old, and he had less than a Galleon left after the Knight Bus. He was unmoored in time, the thirty-six year old Severus Snape, but he had his mind, he had most of his memories, and Lily Evans was still alive. He closed his eyes and leaned against the door. Lily was alive, and this time, this place, he would not send her to her death.

“You’re back early,” Eileen Snape’s sharp voice rang out. “Why didn’t you ask the neighbors to let you inside? Mrs. Cassidy would let you in.”

Severus refused to open his eyes. Mrs. Cassidy, to his knowledge, had died the summer of his fourth year--technically a year ago. His mother had been on yet another depressive break, only stirring from bed to use the bathroom. His father had been travelling, working somewhere. He had sent very little money home; Severus had to ask Mr. Evans to drive him to Newcastle, where he could exchanging his tutoring money for pounds and use that to pay the bills.

“Out, out of the way,” his mother ordered. Severus shuffled aside, blinking back into the present day. His mother was nervy, boney as usual, and her sweater had a new tear at the sleeve.

“Where’s Tobias?” he asked.

“At the pub. He’ll be home soon.”

Severus doubted that. Tobias normally stumbled in very late at night, sometimes early in the morning--a good hour after the last call for drinks, at least. Later when he was home. Suddenly, he was gripped a wave of exhaustion so tangible he slumped against the outside wall of his house. Six hours on the Hogwarts Express, three hours on the Knight Bus, and an hour of dragging his bag from the woods outside Shiremoor all the way to Cokeworth: it was taking a toll, and now he was back at Spinner’s End. He used to have nightmares about this, finding himself squashed between Tobias’ fists and Eileen’s fury, the knowledge that they hated him, the sheer degradation of poverty. 

He had gotten out, though. He had gotten himself a nice little house in Marsden, on the Leas, facing the sea, and had spent his weekends there, before he had become Head of Slytherin, and vacationed there when school was not in session, before the advent of the Dark Lord. He’d kept the house, after Tobias had finally died, turned it into something a safehouse for his darker books--no need to let the Headmaster know he was still doing his research on the Philosopher’s Stone.

“Are you coming in or not?” Eileen snapped from the doorway. “You’re letting in the rain in.” She closed the door. Severus rolled his eyes and went inside.

The house on Spinner’s End was cramped, with aging furniture and dusty floors. His mother could never keep a good house--the paint was peeling off the walls, the wood was warped, the rooms smelling suspiciously stale. A cheap television stood in the corner, a sagging sofa before it. Severus went straight up the staircase--he had hidden that behind a row of books, hadn’t he, in 1993, after Black had escaped. He reached his room, throwing the bag onto the floor, and slumped onto his bed, kicking the door closed as he went. Staring at the ceiling, he asked himself, now what?

He let himself wallow, staring at the mold at the upper lefthand corner. He had fought so hard to leave this place, and here he was, back at Spinner’s End for a summer, and Hogwarts after that. It was as if nothing had changed--and what had, really? He had stayed at Hogwarts from fall to spring every year since he was eleven--twenty-five years stuck there. He hadn’t done anything he dreamed he would, leaving the United Kingdom, traveling, eradicating the werewolf disease, even finding a partner to settle down with. There had been lovers, of course, it had been easier when the Mark had faded to almost nothing--Lucie Rosier, Evan’s little sister at Beauxbatons, but she hadn’t wanted to settle down with a half-blood, particularly a half-Muggle; Saoirse had been fun, but only on the weekends, their attempt at cohabitation had been brief for a reason; and Charity Burbage, but that had been a disaster, he still couldn’t look her in the eye. What was going on, back at his Hogwarts? Was he missing? Had the Headmaster noticed him gone? What would happen to the war effort? The Order wouldn’t have known the Dark Lord was seeking the prophecy once more, if it were not for his information, but of course no one would have known the prophecy if it hadn’t been for him.

He sat up abruptly. The prophecy! The Hall of Prophecy, he had been running through it, chasing Potter, that idiot boy, who had run off to save Black, and Black hadn’t been at Headquarters, Kreacher told him he had snuck out, so Severus had sent a Patronus to Dumbledore and Apparated there, but he had gotten there before the children had and met the Death Eaters instead. He had played it off, saying he was alerting them the children were coming, that they should ambush them, and he had run through the Hall of Prophecy to find a weird room, an archway, Lily screaming in terror, Regulus’ choked cries as he drowned in his own blood, he had run straight through it and woke up here.

This was the sort of dark magic he craved, that make him shiver as his skin prickled, an enchantment that legilimized those within reach and seduced them into the illusion, sent them reeling in time and space. He had always wanted to weave a spell like that, take it apart, sing it away. He had never expected to be caught so baldly in it. Lily, if she had survived, if they had ever made up, would have told him “I told you so” before calling the aurors personally, to have him carted to prison for practicing illegal magic. He was remembering why he had let her go so easily, after the initial despair. He loved magic more than he would ever love her.

A crash resounded downstairs; bellowing echoed through the house. Tobias was home. Severus wheeled around on the bed, planting his feet on the floor, and put his head in his hands. Lucius had killed his father for him, in 1978, after Tobias had beaten him so badly the neighbors had called an ambulance. They’d been fighting about magic and his mother’s wand, his mother had taken Tobias’ side--and grabbed his wand before he could hex in self-defense. This felt like a nightmare: waking up to Potter’s sneering face, hoisted up naked around the Lake, coming back home to his father’s waiting fists, his mother’s relentless belittling. At least he hadn’t pissed off Lily, only freaking her out. How was he going to get through this? How was he going to survive until September?

He was thirty-six years old, he reminded himself harshly. He knew how to take care of himself. He would write Slughorn. He needed to figure out a way into the Ministry, to the Department of Mysteries, to check out the Veil. He was going to get out of this somehow. He’d survived the Dark Lord’s return. He could weather out his father. If he could lie to Lord Voldemort and sit through meetings with Sirius Black, he could see his father without trying to kill him. Fleetingly, he missed Lucius, twenty-five years’ worth of friendship--but of course he had betrayed him, hadn’t he? He had to talk to Lily.

Severus stood up straight and cleared his mind. Face blank, he strode downstairs. Predictably, his mother and father were shouting at each other. Somewhat surprisingly, they both fell silent when he came down.

“I’m back,” he said.

Tobias snorted. Tall, gray-haired, with a hawkish face, he towered over Severus, who hadn’t reached his full height until he was eighteen. He wore a sweatshirt and worn blue jeans. He wasn’t wearing his wedding ring. 

“I can see that,” Tobias said. “And brought the rain with you. Didn’t bother closing the damn door, did you?”

Answering would only set him off. Severus pushed past him and went into the kitchen. Eileen followed.

“Don’t you dare turn you back on me!” Tobias barked.

Severus started going through the cupboards: a few cans of peas, another three cans of tomato soup, and there was a wooden bowl full of vegetables from the garden allotment on the counter. His mother had kept busy.

“There’s vegetable stew in the refrigerator,” Eileen said quietly. “Don’t provoke him, I’d like a quiet holiday for once. Do you always have to go out of your way to get on his bad side? Don’t be so rude.”

Severus stared at her flatly. He had not seen her since Tobias’ funeral, where she had accused him of murdering his father, disowned him, and declared she was running off with the postman, leaving the house to him. Lucius had talked him out of torching it. He didn’t even know the name of the postman, or whether she was alive in his--future? His past present? He inspected her hands: she was still wearing her wedding ring, though her engagement ring was gone.

“Boy!” Tobias snapped from the kitchen doorway. “Look me in the eye when I talk to you!”

Resigned, Severus turned around. Behind him, his mother clattered about the kitchen, drawing the pot over with the stew and lighting the oven, heating dinner. His stomach soured. He missed Hogwarts.

“Yes, father?” he said dully. He met his eyes and, unintentionally, picked up a bit of Tobias’ mind--disgust mixed with fear, outlined with shame, and the ribbing of his mates from the pub, for his poncy son thinking he were better than his old man. His lips thin. He was much better than his father. He’d never actually struck a child, though he had wanted to beat Potter’s brains out against his desk when he found him face-first in his Pensieve.

“You think you’re better than us, swanning in from your posh boarding school,” Tobias sneered, “living off the effort of working folks like me. Look at you! Look at your hair, that school of yours is taking the man out of you.” Tobias stepped closer, eying him suspiciously. Severus willed himself not to flinch, but stared back flatly. “Got a girlfriend yet? ‘Cors not, too ugly. You take after your mum.”

Eileen slammed a pot lid onto the stop and started angrily washing her hands.

“Well, I won’t have you freeloading anymore,” Tobias said. “You’ll have to find a job. Earn your keep. Something solid, none of this lazy magic business--”

“I’ve already got a job,” Severus lied quickly and automatically. “Teaching. I’m helping Lily Evans with her Potions work.” He would have to confront her eventually.

“Soup’s ready!” Eileen said briskly. “Come and eat before it gets cold.”

They sat. For all her faults, Eileen Snape was a good cook. Her vegetable stew was flavoral, black pepper and salt and paprika, and she had added fresh oregano from her window garden. When he was a child, Severus used to help her prepare the meals for the week, and work in the garden. Sometimes Lily would join them, but not often--Mrs. Evans didn’t like his family, and had stopped inviting him to dinner when he turned thirteen.

“This is slop,” Tobias said.

Eileen’s face tightened. “Well, I would’ve like to add some beef, but, alas, I found my last fiver missing from the kitchen funds yesterday.” His mother had kept her housekeeping money in a jar under the sink. She hid her personal funds in a copy of Sonnets of a Sorcerer, charmed to ignore her husband’s notice. She had, however, underestimated her son’s clever eyes--but Severus was never a thief. Not even James Potter ever accused him of stealing.

“Are you accusing me of taking money that already belongs to me?” Tobias said casually. “Because you live off my salary. I don’t see you working.”

“Well, neither do I,” Eileen said. “Marjory Harris told me you were fired two weeks ago from Lance’s company. When were you planning on telling me, pray tell?” Severus actually winced at that last bit--“pray tell,” Eileen always got posh and arch when she especially wanted to annoy her husband, who had almost done his O levels, and would’ve too, if his father hadn’t fallen ill.

“Marjory Harris is full of shit,” Tobias said. “Lance gave me another chance. He needs someone for a crew in South Shields anyway, and I’m the only one in this bloody town who’s ever worked on a ship.”

“For about two weeks,” Severus muttered.

“What was that?”

“Any word on the foreclosures at the mill?” Severus asked quickly. “Or is Mr. Townsend closing it for good?”

“Leary and the lands are gearing up for another strike,” Eileen interjected.

“Bloody lot of good that’ll do to them,” Tobias said, “starving their families.”

Severus and Eileen exchanged a glance. For much of his childhood, they had subsided on a meal a day. Eileen had to patronize a soup kitchen for most of the summer of his third year, and Severus had scavenged off of Lily’s leftovers--that was the year Tobias went on a ender.

“So you’ll be in South Shields then,” Eileen said. “How long? I wish you’d’ve told me earlier--”

“Not any of your business, is it? It’s my work. Fix your face,” Tobias snapped at Severus, who hadn’t been aware his face as lapsed into anything more than its usual disgust. Tobias grotesquely popped his eyes wide and dramatically scowled. “You look like a creep.”

“I look like you,” Severus sneered.

Tobias rose suddenly and backhanded him. Eileen’s mouth fell open. Severus jumped out of his chair and threw his bowl at him, spreading soup across the kitchen. He launched himself at him, knocking Tobias to the ground.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” Severus grunted, punching him across the face. “Don’t you ever fucking touch me again.” Some rational part of him, the part of him that remained resolutely an adult, who wanted closure, who worried what Dumbledore would think, spoke: hmm, I’ve lost it now, but what’s the chance that this is more than a dark-arts induced coma, anyway?

“Severus, please,” Eileen pleaded. His head snapped back to stare at her incredulously. Tobias had attacked him first.

Tobias took this chance to uppercut him. Severus went sprawling. Tobias grabbed him by his neck and shook him.

“I’ll do what I’ll bloody like with you,” his father said, and threw him to the ground. Severus curled up instinctively. Tobias kicked him, once, twice, his body shuddering at the blows. Well, this had been a stupid idea. So much for closure: he would’ve liked to beat the old man.

“I’m going out,” Tobias snapped at Eileen, and stormed away. “Be back when the freak’s gone to school.” The door slammed shut. Severus whimpered slightly, resting his splitting head on the cool kitchen floor. Moving did not seem like a comfortable action.

In the resulting silence, Eileen said to her soup-splattered kitchen, “Why the fuck did you have to do that for? Why do you always have to provoke him? Fuck, Severus!” She got up. Pausing at the doorway, she said, “Oh, and you can clean up the kitchen too! What am I going to do with you? Why did you do that?”

“Thought it’d bring me closure,” he said sardonically.

“What horseshit is that?” Fuming, his mother stormed upstairs. Severus closed his eyes and tried to will the pain away. Perhaps he would get Lucius to kill her, too. It was becoming increasingly clear that he needed to leave. He would go over to the Evans’ house in the morning and borrow Lily’s owl. He could write Slughorn, ask him to arrange for him to take his Potions NEWT early--Slughorn had been supervising his extracurricular experiments since second year, to prevent him from blowing up his dormitory again, though everyone had been grateful that he had burned up their tacky curtains. He knew his skill. Testing was at the Ministry, he had supervised enough summer exams there, and he could wander off easily enough and break into the Department of Mysteries and find that bloody veil. He had had enough of this nightmare; Lily’s eyes, color in the world again, was not worth Cokeworth again.

Eventually, Severus got himself up. Eileen, if memory served, hid her wand under the sink: he found it and waved it. The refrigerator let out a warning splutter; electricity and cleaning spells did not cooperate often. Still, the magic took, vanishing the spilled soup and drops of blood. He washed his face in the kitchen sink and stumbled upstairs, keeping his mother’s wand with him--he needed something without the Trace on it. When he awoke the next morning, it was to an empty house, but a knock on the front door. He stumbled downstairs.

He creaked the door open. “What?” he snapped, and then felt his heart stop. He made to close the door, instinct overriding sense.

“Sev, you look like shit,” Lily said, catching the door, and inviting herself in. “What happened?”


	4. Day Dreaming

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last chapter before the serious conflict begins, it’s exciting. And thank you guys for the kudos! It does indeed make me write faster. James’ role is finally revealed, but I’ll save more for the next chapter, this has ended up longer than I thought it would. Please let me know if you think I’m flanderizing his character. I see him as a jock, the type of guy who really is a great friend--but a total shit to be around, if you don’t fit in his definition of acceptable. Frat boy fuckboi, you know what I mean? I went to a very fratty Southern college, and I see a lot of parallels to the anglophiliac American South and J.K. Rowling’s pureblood society. Rowling, why did you want so hard to be one of the cool kids? Her latest tweet about Snape’s “slight natural talent” at Legilimency infuriated me--let him be good at one damn thing. She just strikes me as incredibly ableist. PTSD doesn’t exist in her world, and abused children either end up total psychopaths or Saint Potter, nothing in-between. Children not conceived in love have no humanity? That’s really, really shitty. But this is why I write fanfiction. Anyway, I’ve been writing this fic very quickly, but I can feel myself burning out. I’m not sure the next chapter will come out within the week, but I’ll do my best.
> 
> Disclaimer: I own nothing but my words, and the consequences thereof.
> 
> Content Warning: Child abuse, physical and emotional; (internalized) homophobia, invalidation of emotional abuse; stalking. Emotional abuse is very much abuse; Snape is going way over the line when he denies it.

They Call This Closure?

Lily had never come to his house, except for one brief, screaming fight in 1978, after his father’s funeral, and that had taken place mostly on the doorstep. It had gone other places, of course, but he didn’t want to think about that. She pushed her way into his house, door swinging shut behind her, and pushed him into the armchair.

“You really shouldn’t be standing,” she said. “Do you have any bruise balm? What happened? You can’t stay here.”

“I was sleeping,” Severus said, “before you barged into my house, with typical Gryffish entitlement. And no, I don’t, used the last after the incident at the Lake. And what do you mean, I can’t stay here? Contrary to popular belief, I am not some---swanky pureblood, able to scurry off whenever my parents’ dislike becomes too...hurtful, neglectful of my sense of self-worth and feelings.”  
Lily stared at him. “Swanky?” she echoed. “I never want to hear you use that word again.”

“Yes, well,” Severus said grudgingly, “I’m fine.”

“You’ve got two black eyes. I think a vessel in your eye burst, Sev. It’s all red.”

Severus shrugged, and then winced.

Lily’s eyes took on the sparkle of determination, similar to Albus’ when he was trying to convince him to go to a support group or sent him on a too-expensive-holiday-to-refuse, as a way of trying to heal him. “Where’s your cauldron?”

“Get out of my house.”

“Upstairs, then!” she said cheerily. “I take it you have your usual freshly-stocked potions kit in your bag?”

“Stay out of my room.”

“Be right back!” Lily sang, and hurried up the stairs. Severus slouched in his chair and tried not to move much, cursing friendship. She handled him much like Albus did, less seriously than Lucius did, and certainly with less showy respect than Narcissa did: kindly, humorously, teasingly. He closed his eyes. His closest friend was the most powerful wizard in the world, but only ten years into the future, or sideways in an alternate universe, or outside this damn Dark Arts-induced coma. His next closest friend was an irritatingly optimistic sixteen year old girl, who he had alienated with a racist slur and then attempted to impress by joining the very organization that had sworn to kill people like her and prevent the existence of miscegenated people like him. Of course, he had thought he would work from the inside to protect her and use it as a way to advance his career and explore the old magic he loved, and maybe win glory and put a stopper in death while he was at it, but he had been a bit of an idiot at eighteen, hadn’t he, signing over his immortal soul to Dark Arts-demented pretentious lordling, who couldn’t even speak French properly?

Lily came crashing in, hoisting his cauldron aloft. “Where do you brew?” she asked.

He had created a basement about two years ago, in 1994, as the mark had darkened, and made a decent-enough laboratory there. When he was a student, he had mostly brewed his more magical potions out in the woods, lugging his kit in his bag back and forth. He could get away with bruise salve and general herbal remedies in a saucepan in the kitchen, though.

“There’s a saucepan under the sink that I use,” he said. “Pineapple vinegar’s in the milk bottle, so labelled pineapple vinegar. Just need some parsley cutting, there should be a plant on the windowsill. There should be arnica, too.”

“Do you have beeswax, for the salve?” Lily asked.

Severus frowned a bit deeper. He was always frowning, but this time, his expression was a bit more thoughtful. He used to trade pineapple products with Slughorn, for ingredients he needed. Slughorn gave him the pineapple, he made various herbal products for him, and in return was given a ready supply of the Headmaster’s beeswax, from his own hives. After his second year of teaching, when he had proved that he was generally a human being, Albus had shown him his hives directly. He remembered him and Pomona getting him up in the suit, Pomona showing him the faculty gardens, the three of them discussing where Severus could have his own plot. “I should have some in a jar upstairs,” he said finally. “Slughorn and I have a deal.”

Lily was looking at him, concerned. “You look like…” she hesitated, but persevered, “is everything okay? In Slytherin? You look like somebody’s just died.”

“I’m fine,” Severus ground out. “Why are you here anyway?”

“You’re not fine, let me make that bruise balm.”

“Don’t forget the valerian!” he called after her.

“You can’t add that to everything!” he heard her bellow from upstairs. “Just for that, I’m adding lavender oil!” Severus sighed. Everyone who smelled him in the neighborhood was going to think he was queer, more gay than strange. There were a bit right, he had messed around with Wilkes, nothing serious, in fourth year. He had been more seriously and recently with Sturgis Podmore, drinks after Order meetings sometimes, Slytherin solidarity, back to Sturgis’ place two or three times during the summer, but he’d firmly ended it when the school year began. His weekends were taken up by the Dark Lord, anyway. He didn’t count either of them as formal relationships, as extended lovers. Sturgis once asked him if Albus knew about them, and Severus had snapped something nasty, he didn’t remember what. Maybe that was the internalized shame speaking, but he was always ashamed of something, wasn’t he? Dumbledore made sure of that. Lily’s eyes too.

Lily came back with the ingredients for the potion, and bustled around, brewing busily. She sang a bit as she worked, Severus recognized the words: “As it fell out upon one day,/ Rich Divers he gave a feast;/And invited all his neighbours in,/And gentry of the best.”

“I’m no Lazarus,” Severus said. “I forgot you liked the Child Ballads. Folk music.”

Lily blushed slightly, pausing her chopping. “Well, you know. I wonder how much of them are pre-Separation, you know?”

“I’m bisexual, by the way,” Severus said suddenly. What he was doing? “Not--queer, entirely. But I did have sort of a thing with Wilkes.”

Lily turned around. “What?” she said, confused.

“Just thought you should know.”

“Uh. Okay. Thanks? For telling me.” She looked at him incredulously. “Wilkes?”

Severus, to his horror, was blushing. “He had nice hands,” he said honestly. “We didn’t…” Merlin’s balls, he was telling a teenager about his sex life. Since when did he even talk about his sex life? He cleared his throat. “That’s why I got so upset, when you’d go on and on about him. He’s not so bad with me. Even though I’m half-Muggle.”

Lily’s mouth was slightly agape. “But, you like girls too?” She blinked a few times.

“Er, yeah,” he said. He repressed the thought. He hoped he was in a coma, why was he doing this? To enjoy the fantasy of Lily Evans pre-Potter being his best friend, she said she loved him, he may as well take the dream to its heights. “Anyway, it was fourth year. Nothing serious. I’m not interested in getting involved with anyone in Slytherin.” Or under the age of thirty, he mentally amended, twenty-five at the most outset, not that anybody would be looking at him. What was the rule? Half your age, plus seven? Charity was five years younger, Sturgis two years older. Lucie Rosier had been seventeen and he twenty-three when they met, and that had gone on and off for too long a time. He really prefered his own age group.

“In-house breaks-ups are always nasty,” Lily said faintly. “Marlene and Sirius were just messy, I think they’re still hooking up. Remember when she hexed him at dinner, when he came in holding hands with Benjy Fenwick’s little sister?”

He didn’t, because he was thirty-six and had never been that interested in the sexual goings-on of his peers, unless they directly affected him. He had known that Wilkes was only playing with him to try and get Evan Rosier jealous, for example, which Evan had blithely ignored. Evan had never been very interested in sex and romance, anyway--transfiguration was the only thing that got him passionate.

Lily went back to the bruise balm. “Don’t you have a radio or something?” she called.

Creakily, Severus got up and turned on the radio in the kitchen. The Who came blaring on, “Baba O’Riley,” “I don't need to fight/To prove I'm right/I don't need to be forgiven,” and he chuckled.

“What’s that about, then?” Lily asked, smiling uncertainly.

“Just thinking about Tobias,” he said, and settled into a dining chair, leaning on the table. His hands were trembling. He needed to eat, drink some water, something.

Lily slid the herb cuttings into the mortar and began to grind on beat with the music. “What happened, anyway?” Lily asked. “I thought he stopped hitting you when we were kids.” To Severus’ knowledge, she was definitely still a child.

“It’s only when I get mouthy,” he said.

Lily hummed to the music. It wasn’t quite music one could hum to. He hoped they’d switch to something else--his enjoyment of the Who started and ended with “My Generation,” which he had used to justify joining the Death Eaters. People really should’ve tried harder to put them down. “Where’s your mam?” Lily said.

Severus shrugged, and regretted it. How the hell did he fuck up his shoulder? Probably when he landed on his arm, when Tobias had thrown him to the floor.

“You really should stay with me for the summer,” Lily said rapidly.

“No,” Severus said immediately.

“It’s not safe for you here--”

“No.”

“Come on, you can stay in Petunia’s room, she’s staying with her university mates in Newcastle, said it was cheaper just to stay in town and work, rather than come home and have to find a new apartment when classes resume. You wouldn’t be trouble--”

“Stop trying to save me,” Severus snapped. “I’m fine, Tobias is going up to South Shields to work, and Eileen--”

Lily turned around. Leaning against the counter, she scowled, “Christ, Severus, I’m just trying to be a good friend. You’re not okay, you’ve been really weird all year, and since the time at the Lake, it’s like you’ve disappeared! I’m worried about you, okay, it’s actually a damn good thing, because if I didn’t care I’d have just left you to rot. Is that what you want?” She pointed at him with the pestle. A bit of mashed valerian flower fell to the floor. Severus resisted the urge to point it out.

“No,” he said, “not at all. Please. Lily.”

“You’re an ornery bastard,” she informed him. “Have you eaten yet?”

“You know you’re prone to codependent relationships,” Severus informed her, “acting like this. I don’t deserve you.”

“Shut up.”

Severus said, honestly, “I’m sorry. I don’t take you for granted.”

Lily spun around and threw her hands in the air. “Why the fuck did you avoid me, at the end of term? You can’t just--say you love me, beg me to stick around, tell me you’re a good person, that you’re going to prove you’re good,” Severus did not remember saying that last bit, “and just fucking disappear on me!”

“Because I was an awkward little shit,” he said.

“Oh, that explains it.”

“I don’t like being vulnerable.”

“So you hurt others.”

“I’m sorry.”

Lily scooped the beeswax into the saucepan and turned on the gaslit stove. She placed it on the burner, squashing the blue flame, and returned to mashing the valerian and all into a paste. “This place is toxic,” she said quietly. “Why don’t you leave?”

“Where would I go?”

“Me, Sev. I’ll deal with my parents.”

“They don’t like me.”

“It’d help if you wash your hair.”

“Oh, fuck you.” He crossed his arms and looked at the peeling paint instead. Lily started laughing.

“Oh, Sev, stay in my life forever, would you?” she giggled. “But stop being such a knob.”

“At least I’m not a toerag,” he said.

“No, more of a dunderhead,” she agreed. “Now, should I give it seven counterwise stirs with my wand, and end it with one clockwise? To add the healing magic.”

Lily finished the balm, and Severus went upstairs to apply it. It worked like magic, which is was, because it was brewed by a witch with a willing wand. He changed into his best muggle clothes, which were still scruffy---an old green button-down of his father’s, gray trousers. He slipped into his parents’ room, rejoicing in his mobility, and snuck a black hair elastic off the dresser. Tying his hair back, he swept everything into his ever-expanding duffel bag, his favorite paperback Muggle pulps---Sherlock Holmes, H.P. Lovecraft, Elric of Melniboné, Lord of the Rings and the Simarillion---and, to be an asshole, took his mother’s collection of Jane Austen novels, his father’s beraggled copy of I, Claudius and Latin reader. Tobias had been very good at Latin, in secondary school, but never good enough to read classics at Oxford, no matter what he claimed. He had been named for Severus Alexander, whom Tobias claimed was underrated.

Lily was staring at him amusedly. “You’re still going to wash your hair at my house. We have indoor plumbing, at least.”

“I’ll wear a hat.” He swiped his father’s flat cap from where it had been abandoned on the sagging sofa. “How do I look?”

“Like a muggle working class Geordie lad,” Lily said. “Infinitely respectable, but for the regrettable hair. Which is a charming mark of individuality, if only you would wash it regularly and keep it out of your face. Let’s go.”

Severus shouldered his bag and took the flowering valerian from the windowsill. Lily shook her head. “What?” he said. “For your mother.”

“I swear valerian gets you high,” she muttered. “Doesn’t it have mood-altering properties?”

“Only the root.”

“Christ, Severus.”

They trooped to her house, bickering companionably. Severus was enjoying himself, though slightly embarrassed that a sixteen year old had proved the most comfortable influence on his life. He hadn’t bantered like this since, well, dinner with Lucius, the summer of 1994, before the World Cup, sipping at absinthe in his lounge, laughing that everything was about to change, the precarious lives they had built since the Dark Lord’s disappearance were about to disappear. Lucius had hoped for the better; Severus had been almost looking forward to the fulfillment of the prophecy, for finally getting the Potter brat into action, and, if all went well, moving on.

Reaching the lower middle class housing of the other side of the Tyne River in Cokeworth, he eyed Lily, the cloudy English day, the neighbors mostly ignoring them, a couple glaring at him. Perhaps this could be a form of moving on, too---he wasn’t returning to Spinner’s End. He was out of the web. He smirked, slightly, and walked faster. Lily skipped to catch up, jostling his shoulder, which was still a little raw. He didn’t have to answer to the Dark Lord, to Dumbledore either. For now, only his conscience was guiding him--and the ready symbol of Lily’s eyes.

 

The Evans family had a nice three-bedroom house with a front yard full of flowers and a back entrance from the kitchen that led to a gray, depressing alleyway. Mr. Evans was a manager at the supermarket in South Shields and had a car; Mrs. Evans was a neurotic housewife. Petunia was a bitch. Lily was just as self-righteous as her parents and sister, but tempered it with a genuine care for others, rather than what they would think. Her mother disliked how her painting habit had turned from a hobby into something Lily wanted to pursue seriously. Her father just ignored it all; he had wanted a son. Still, he supplied her with art supplies, and took the family to picturesque walks on the beach, to Hadrian’s Wall. Sometimes Severus was invited. He and Mr. Evans had a companionable sort of silent acquaintanceship going on, in the sense of being indifferent towards the other’s existence but relieved that the other wasn’t involved in family squabbles. He was never asked to stay after dinner.

“Did you ask your parents about my staying here?” Severus asked, as they trooped upstairs.

Lily shrugged. “My dad likes you.”

“Lily---”

“Let’s get you set up in Petunia’s room before my dad comes back. Mam’s spending the week with her mother, she’s feeling poorly.”

Severus had the tact not to ask which one wasn’t well. Lily’s parents did not fight, and certainly not in a way the neighbors could understand. But Mrs. Evans’ relatives were always doing poorly, and Mrs. Evans was always looking after them. Severus suspected this was where Lily had gotten her saving people thing, and also how she had developed her intense hatred of passive-aggression.

Petunia’s room was unsurprisingly tasteful, shades of blue, with a perfectly neatened desk. There were no photographs anywhere. Severus understood, suddenly, how much Petunia had hated this place. Her design sense resembled his in its bleak neatness. He set his bag at the foot of the bed. “I was wondering if I could borrow your owl,” he said. “I’d like to write to Slughorn. We’d been talking about sitting the Potions NEWT early, since I was coaching Narcissa and Rookwood. And perhaps he could set me up with a job in Newcastle.”

Lily stiffened. “You never told me there was a wizarding community of Newcastle.”

Severus looked at her, surprised. He sensed he was on unsteady ground. “It’s pretty small. About six families and three or four shops.” Most Wizarding enclaves had about twelve families, for all that they were all a little too closely related anyway. “Mam’s only taken me a few times. But we still got my wand at Ollivander’s.” Not technically a lie: he visited there monthly, after he turned seventeen, and made a point of patronizing their apothecary and pub. “It’s on one of the abandoned wharves.”

“We should go,” Lily said. “Soon. If I’d known they were there, we wouldn’t have bothered with Diagon Alley. Stupid southern supremacy.”

Severus sat on the bed as Lily hurried to find her owl, a scops owl, much like Potter’s Weasley’s annoying little bird, it had crapped on his shoulder, flitting about Headquarters over the summer. He considered the surreality of his life: he was sixteen and sitting on Petunia Evans’ bed, moving into the Evans’ home, still secure in Lily’s friendship without alienating his housemates---yet. He could play off moving in with a muggleborn to Lucius easily, explaining how terrifyingly violent his father had been, how useless his mother was. He could expedite his Potions career. He could have a career outside of Hogwarts, he’d religiously avoid the Hogs Head and Sybil Trelawney, he could leave the United Kingdom, hide out in New Zealand or Hong Kong until the war blew over. He could talk Lily into following him, into prioritizing her art over her lovers, he could talk Lucius into taking that banking job in France, he could persuade Narcissa to turn her charitable efforts into outright politicking and get a rational conservative in the Wizengamot. Opportunity set him trembling.

Lily knocked on the door. “Do you need anything?” she asked briskly. “Because I’m going to take a quick shower, and then start on a project--I’ve been working on a series of Hogwarts sketches, going to try to put the Gryffindor common room onto canvas. I think there’s a box of Weetabix--mam’s on another diet--in the kitchen. Don’t disturb me. Oh, here’s the owl.”

Severus wrote the letter quickly and carefully. He had always gotten along with Slughorn, who had encouraged his partnership with Lucius, who had let him use one of the labs for his own research. Horace had been a decent professor, distant with the former political party of the Knights of Walpurgis, but not necessarily discriminatory. He had made gentle inquiries into Severus’ homelife in the beginning of his fourth year, when he had come rather emaciated---and when rebuffed, had established some tutoring jobs (Potions, Herbology, Arithmancy) and owled him each Midsummer and Mabon an expansive breadbasket, technically in thanks for all the pineapple goods he made him in the school year, and the good job in keeping the House’s grades up. He sealed the letter, stationery set given to him by Lucius. He closed his eyes slightly. He should write Lucius, and Narcissa as well, and he had promised Augustus he would keep him updated, hadn’t he? Not to mention Wilkes and Avery tended to write him, and Regulus Black had wanted to meet sometime to talk over an OWL prep guide, and he had forgotten the excuse he had given him, to avoid going down to London the first time around. Well, they could write him first, and for now, he’d just react.

He attached the letter to Gwaihir, Lily’s little owl, who chirrupped importantly, and carried it to the window. As it winged off, his mind grew heavier. This wasn’t a day dream--he had to figure out the spell that had him trapped, no matter how pleasant it was turning. He wished he could talk to Albus, spin ideas around--and Lily was totally out of the question, and Lucius had never been interested in mind magic beyond intimidation and what sigils he could weave into his robes. Then he went downstairs and made himself a sandwich. He could hear Lily’s music blasting upstairs---Bob Dylan, “How many roads must a man walk down/Before you call him a man?/How many seas must a white dove sail/Before she sleeps in the sand?” Good question, Lily, he’d like to know too.

The doorbell rang. He hurried upstairs. “Lily!” he shouted above the music. “Somebody’s at the door!”

“No interruptions! You get it!”

“I would rather not announce my residence here to all and sundry before your father comes home.”

“Inspiration, Sev! Deal with it!”

He sighed, and dealt with it. He was a guest, after all, in an increasingly surreal world. Lily had never had a chance to fully reveal her inspiration, though, he hadn’t ever seen her portrait of the Gryffindor common room, though he had seen the sketches---and that was his fault, he had lost her, sent her to her death, and no one spoke about Lily Potter’s art anymore, though Slughorn still used the wax-seal she had made him.

He opened the door. “What?” His eyes widened.

“The fuck are you doing here?” James Potter asked.

Severus slammed the door. “LILY! GET THE FUCK DOWN HERE!” he bellowed. “FUCKING POTTER’S HERE!”


	5. Veiled Hopes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: Well, here goes my depiction of James, and the junior Death Eaters. Let me know if you think I’m being unfair--if James is too much of a prick, if I’m excusing the Death Eaters at all. But the plot’s getting moving, and Snape will soon be back at Hogwarts. Now, in what year? I’ll let you know. I really enjoy writing Lily and Severus’ friendship. Now, 1976!Severus was probably a lot more jealous and controlling than 1996!Severus, and J.K. Rowling probably thinks Lily’s saving people thing is less codependent as I read it, but we have different life experiences. I’m reading and writing Snape as very codependent, by the way--in his youth, with Lily and Lucius, and as an adult with Dumbledore.  
> As to why I’ve written Snape as bisexual---well, as a lesbian who took far too long to come out, I think we need more queer representation in the media. Fanfiction’s one of the few places you’ll see it, where it’s not played as a dramatic reveal, just as something everyday, something normal. People--heterosexuals, perhaps--tend to fixate on the coming out part.   
> On Snape’s muggle clothes: there’s no way he was wearing clothes as nice as he was shown in the movie. Sweatpants, an overlarge t-shirt, beatup work boots? That’s more likely. Also, the Nexus Metro wasn’t completed until 1984, but I hope you can forgive the anachronism as you forgive the Americanisms.
> 
> Disclaimer: Don’t own anything but my own words.
> 
> Content Warning: Stalking, sexual harassment; bullying; codependency.

They Call This Closure?

Lily’s head poked over the bannister of the upstairs staircase. “Who’s fucking Potter? Why do I need to know?”

“James Potter is at your doorsteps,” Severus said, heart racing, eyes wild. “What the fuck is he doing here? Did you set this up?” Lily scurried down and put a hand his shoulder. He flinched away.

“Sev, don’t be an arse,” she said firmly, eyes boring into his soul. He had memorized almond shape of them, but was surprised by the slightly inflamed veins in the whites, the shadows wrinkling under them. He had almost thought she slept soundly. “He can’t be here, it’s a Muggle neighborhood. I didn’t even know there was a wizarding town nearby.”

The doorbell rang again. “I swear, if this is a fucking prank,” Lily muttered. She touched him again, gently, on his arm. He looked at her arm in amazement. She had never been so physical with him, he rather thought he repulsed her. Maybe he was repulsing her away. She sighed. “You look like you’ve been in a war zone. Why don’t you go upstairs and take a bath, and I’ll deal with this.” It was not a question. It was an order.

“I’m not leaving you alone with him,” Severus said firmly. His heart was pounding in his ears, barely-controlled rage was pulsing his vision into a blur. This must have been how he won her, showing up at her door, affably asking her how she was after he had abandoned her, insulted her. He was shaking. Potter had been to Cokeworth, he had seen his filthy hometown--albeit the nicer side of it--had Lily told him where he lived?

Lily drew back as if slapped. “You don’t get to decide that,” she said. “You promised---”

“He threatened to hex you,” Severus said quickly. He was articulate, he was an adult, he once made Charity Burbage come with just his voice. He could win an argument with a teenaged girl. “At the Lake. If you didn’t go out with him.” When this was resolved, he was locking himself in Petunia’s room and launching himself into a deep trance. He had to get his mind rearranged.

“If I didn’t stop bothering him for bothering you,” Lily corrected.

Irritation shot through him. Of course Lily would defend Potter. She always said she was just giving people the benefit of the doubt, trying to see the best in their motives, and he would get angry and tell her she was naive, and her temper would flare, and they wouldn’t speak until the day before double Potions, and it would be as if nothing had happened. Severus sneered, “He’s been outright harassing me, Lily, hexing me four-on-one, it’s more than ‘bothering’---”

The doorbell rang again. Lily sighed. “I don’t want to fight.”

“I’ll go upstairs. But---”

Now, a persistent knocking echoed through the house. “Lily!” Potter shouted, muffled through the door. “Are you okay? Has he got you hostage? Lily!”

In one of those beautiful moments of unison, Severus and Lily caught each other’s eye, wearing the same sardonic grimace. Severus, this time, leaned forward. “Shout toerag if you need me.” As he climbed upstairs he rejoiced in his maturity: take that, Potter. It took him to the top of the stairs to realize that it would sound as if she were calling him toerag, rather than Potter.

He settled on Petunia’s bed and tried to immerse himself into The Fellowship of the Ring, which he had read every year since he was fourteen, pretending to be Strider, who cleaned up well. He wasn’t sure he ever looked well---but he had better things to do than worry about the state of his hair, such as his actual job. Classwork, his personal projects, his correspondence, working with the house, and restless hall patrol were all more important than a hair care routine. He didn’t smell. He made his own damn soaps, he knew he didn’t stink, not anymore, not since he was a child---and he was a child again, wasn’t he?

Potter was charming, good-looking, and socially accepted. Anxiety shot through him. He threw his book onto the bed and started to unpack, arranging his books on Petunia’s eerily clean desk, against the wall in a neat row. The battered paperbacks reassured him, the textbooks reminded him of what he knew. He had Libatius Borage’s damn Advanced Potion Making memorized by the time he was twelve, fully corrected by fifteen, and he had published his revisions at nineteen. He had gotten his Th.D in his mid-twenties; Slughorn had been thirty-three when he’d finally published his dissertation. Severus pulled out his cauldron, thanking whatever God was there for expansion charms, and set it at the foot of the bed. He had donated his student cauldron to the school. Lucius had bought him his first professional set, as his coming-of-age gift.

He arranged his pitiful collection of muggle clothes, kneeling in front of the empty chest of drawers. Petunia had done her best to leave as smoothly as possible. He was surprised he owned two pairs of sweatpants, overlarge, once Tobias’. He had a distressingly tattered collection of ill-fitting gray t-shirts. There was one nice button-down, frayed at the cuffs and the elbows, dark green with gray stripes. His wizarding wardrobe was little better--hand me down robes with scorch marks from potions gone wrong and Snivvy-hunting. He sat back on his heels, thinking. Whatever spell he was trapped in, it had to be legilimantic. The level of detail required his mind to supply the details. Potter showing up at Lily’s doorstep was unexpected, but reasonably a manifestation of his fear that Lily would be taken away from his again. He would, of course, cease all communication with her if she married him again, or, god forbid, have any sort of relations with him. He had no intention of turning this illusion into a nightmare.

Lily had been downstairs too long of a time. Perhaps Potter had kidnapped her. Severus slumped onto the floor. He was a possessive person, temper easily irritated by jealousy. Lucie had long forced him to accept that, and Charity had left him because of that, among other things, Death Eater tattoo included and probably the most significant. He had a right to protect his kith and kin, though, as long as he was rational about it--but Lily was not kin, and their relationship as kith was always rocky. She was only a child, she had no idea what she was up against. Still, James Potter was not the Dark Lord, and most of his acquiantance would happily hex her. What did he even think of her? What did he want from her? What the hell did he want?

To be out of this spell, for one. To break it and return home. He had to get to the ministry, to the Department of Mysteries. There he could figure out his situation, and then he could sit down with a cup of tea with Albus and talk about this curious magic, and whether or not it revealed any exploitable weaknesses, in him or in the current Death Eaters, and if they could replicate it, to trap the Dark Lord. He smirked: what a reversal that would be, sticking the Dark Lord in this mind trap, the next time he legilimized him!

“Sev?” Lily was at the door, looking shaken. “Potter’s gone. I think he was trying to keep chatting until he got invited to dinner, but I told him I had to attend to my guest and that he needed to fuck off. He was trying to apologize for the Lake incident. For threatening to hex me, I mean. Nothing about you. Such a toerag. Anyway. Speaking of dinner. Wanna cook for the family? My dad’ll be home soon.”

“You alright?” he asked.

She shook her head. “It’s like he can’t get it through his head, I don’t want to be with him. I don’t want to be his friend. I don’t even want to acknowledge he exist---he just, he tried to convince me you’d imperiused me, and I told him I’ve known you for ages, you hang out at my house, and to leave me alone, and he just wouldn’t---he was relentless---Severus, can we eat first? I want to talk to my dad about it too.”

Severus lifted an eyebrow, inwardly rejoicing. Lily responded badly to obsessive male attention. He had left her much alone at Hogwarts, letting her seek him out. Besides, it looked bad for a Slytherin to be seen actively looking for a mudblood. She and Potter had been friendly enough, they lived in the same House, one had to be friendly with one’s housemates. It looked like Potter had crossed the line. “You’re worried.”

“I want to eat.”

“Alright.”

They went downstairs. Lily’s expression stayed disturbed. Severus investigated the kitchen, pulling some pasta from the cupboards. He set to making a pasta sauce, a few tomatoes, garlic, basil, and of course salt and olive oil. He could feel Lily’s gaze on him. Bothered, he concentrated on the food. He was feeling awkward.

The door slammed open, just as he dropped the pasta into the pot. Both of them jumped. Lily scurried to the door, calling, “Da! We’ve got a situation.” Severus steeled himself to attempt to be nonoffensive company. It was difficult. He rather enjoyed being unpleasant. Mr. Evans, a pale red-headed man with a fascinatingly bushy mustache, walked into the kitchen.

“Severus Alexander,” Mr. Evans said. Severus felt his face immediately twitch into a sneer. No one ever called him that. It made no sense. His name was Severus. He loathed nicknames.

He responded, “Mr. Evans,” and returned to stirring the pasta, hiding his face. Charity once told him that if he had nothing nice to say, he should say nothing at all. He figured he would spend much of this dinner silent. He wished he could let his hair loose, but Lily would get annoyed if he looked even less respectable than he did. He had long since accepted that he just had one of those faces that inspired disgust. Lucie had sighed and told him that if he just bothered to try---but he really had better things to do.

He served dinner, Lily smiling nervously as her father sat down. Mr. Evans was not a bad man; he was just not a particularly emotive person. Lily never quite knew how to talk to him. Severus did not see how it was a bad thing; he often wished his parents were less...emotive.

“Severus needs a place to stay until school starts,” Lily said suddenly. “Can he stay with us? I’ve already moved his stuff in.”

Mr. Evans took a bite of his pasta. “Your mother’s going to stay the month with her mother.”

Lily beamed at him. “Excellent. Can we go to South Shields this weekend? I’d like to sketch the cliffs, and I’m certain you and Severus would enjoy the museum.” Severus would never understand her family, and how easily they accepted change.

Trying to curry favor, Severus offered, “There’s a wizarding community in Newscastle, with a fine apothecary. Professor Slughorn has offered to connect me with the apothecarist, to interview for a position.” Slughorn hadn’t yet, but he would.

Mr. Evans chewed. “Do you like to cook?”

He didn’t have an opinion. “Yes.”

“Excellent.”

Severus looked at Lily, who shrugged. He supposed this meant he was to cook for them now.

“That boy I told you about,” Lily said suddenly, “the posh one from school? He came by today. Wanted to come ‘round for dinner, and wouldn’t leave until I threatened to call the police. He said he’d be back.”

Mr. Evans stopped chewing. He put down his fork. “He’s your friend?”

Lily shrugged. “We’ve lived in the same dormitory---not the same room,” she rushed to clarify, “but in the same space together for five years. We share most of the same classes. We’re friendly. I know him.” She glanced at Severus. “He treats Severus like shit.”

“Language,” Mr. Evans said.

“Crap. Sorry.”

Mr. Evans blinked and turned to Severus. “And you?” Severus realized he was gripping his fork rather tightly. He set it down and cleared his mind.

“I loathe him,” he said slowly. “He is arrogant, he is a bully, he targets those who challenge his worldview and humiliates them so no one else will challenge him either. He fancies himself a heroic knight, in gleaming armor, and because he looks the part most of Gryffindor believes him too. He has no complications. Sun and splendor, sweat and sports, cheering girls---and if you do not fall into those categories, he hounds you until you succumb. For all his courage, he’s never hexed me without backup. Always,” he finished bitterly, “four against one.”

Lily shifted uncomfortably. “He can be cruel. He threatened to hex me when I tried disciplining him, and I’m a prefect.” Severus pointedly did not roll his eyes. In Slytherin, prefectures were well-respected, and when he had returned to the castle he had watched Minerva work to discipline her own House. She had had a tough time with Gryffindor those seven years; apparently her husband had died. Rolanda later told him she had also been grappling with guilt over her own infidelities, but that was no one’s business, and really her own fault. Lily continued, “He’s well-liked though. Sports hero. And he’s very good at Transfiguration, and can be charming when he wants to be.”

“He’s wealthy,” Severus said.

Lily rolled her eyes. “He throws a lot of parties for the House. He’s generous with gifts for anyone whom he considers a friend, and he thinks he’s got a lot of friends. Anyway. He’s planning on coming back. I don’t want him to. I think he will, and I think he’ll try to imply I invited him---I didn’t, I just told him he should check out the muggle world sometime...but if a dark-haired wizard with hazel eyes and an entitled expression comes to the door, just send him away. I don’t want him in the house.”

Severus was watching her squirm. He was beginning to understand why she had married him. If Potter had shown up, and he hadn’t been there, would Lily eventually have caved and let him in? Especially if he so sympathetically apologized for his behavior at the Lake, gotten her to talk about how badly he himself had behaved, comforted her about dropping him as a friend---he was beginning to see it quite clearly now. Angry, he opened his mouth to say something cutting, but a scratch at the window had all three of them flinching.

Slughorn’s owl, a large horned owl, hooted in the kitchen window, and waved its wings dramatically. Severus hurriedly got up and let him in. “I’d like to answer this now,” he said, “while the owl’s still here. If you don’t mind?”

Lily was looking at him warily. “Sure. Da?”

Mr. Evans shrugged, and went back to his food. Severus strode upstairs, still mastering his face. Taking the letter from the owl, he settled at the desk and quickly read:

“My dear boy,

“I do hope whatever circumstances that bring you to Miss Evans’ home have not unduly   
distressed you. I have spoken to my friend in Newcastle, Mr. Khalil Shafiq, and he is   
willing to take you on as a shopboy for the summer. He would like you to stop by the   
shop this Saturday, at noon. Unfortunately, he is unable to assist you in the commute. Is there a public Floo connection nearby?

As to taking your Potions NEWT this summer, I have spoken to Headmaster Dumbledore   
on the matter and he is willing to make an exception in your case if you would brew for him a sample of your work. I do recommend your Draught of Peace and Wiggenweld Potion, my boy, with a write-up on the improvements you’ve made. Dear Libatius is out of the country for the next year, harvesting acromantula venom in Borneo, or else I’d ask you to send me a sample for me to show him myself!

The pineapple bruise balm you gave me does wonders. A bit too much valerian, though. The lavender oil worked well enough for any distress I felt, and the valerian had me feeling so placid I stayed in my armchair all day! 

 

Do try to stay out of trouble, Mr. Snape.

Yours, as always,

Professor Horace Slughorn  
Head of Slytherin House at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry  
Secondary Vice Capo of the Most Extraordinary Society of Potioneers”

 

The next few days passed by quickly. Potter did indeed come by the house the next day, but Mr. Evans blasted him with a hose before he could even open his mouth. Severus watched and cackled from an upstairs window, thoroughly disturbing Lily, who informed him she had never seen him that gleeful, and asked him to refrain from reaching those new heights of happiness around her. Mr. Evans drove them to the Newscastle Wizarding Wharf in time for Severus to make his interview, warning him that this was a one-off attempt and he would have to take the train into town from then on.

Khalil Shafiq was the third son of the Shafiq family, a member of the Sacred Twenty-Eight. His grandparents had hailed from Yemen, settling in South Shields in the 1890s. He ran a clean shop, well-organized, and well-trafficked by North-Eastern wizards. Severus himself patronized the shop, preferring to buy local. He had never worked from Mr. Shafiq, but trusted him as a proprietor. The man was brisk, professional, and quiet. Severus liked him. Job secured, he joined the Evanses for a nice trek at the beaches in South Shields, enjoying the cliffs, and getting lost in the bird sanctuary. No one was particularly interested in swimming. Severus enjoyed laps in the Lake when the students were gone, and was not keen to expose himself to strangers. Lily had outgrown her bathing suit and wanted to wait until her mother came home to shop for a new one. 

He almost had to drag Lily from the Arbeia Fort; she was intent on a new project, having abandoned the Gryffindor common room series until the school year began.

“I can’t work on it with Potter hounding me,” she complained in the car. “I wish he’d leave me alone.”

Severus thought the wisest tack was to say nothing. He flipped through her sketchbook. He still had a painting she had done of deer peeking through the foggy Forbidden Forest, their shadows deep on the Lake. She had known they had the same Patronus, he had seen her face during Defense class, when they practiced it, a Fallow doe. Potter’s stag was obnoxious, and a different kind of deer besides---red deer were called stags, and hers was still a Fallow. It meant nothing, it meant nothing, it meant nothing. Severus paused at a sketch of him with his hair back, cooking at her stove--he’d never seen himself with such a calm expression. Lily saw him looking and seized the sketchbook from him.

“Oy!” she said. “I didn’t say you could look through it!”

“Yes, you did,” he said, a bit annoyed.

“Oh. Right you are, then. But don’t look at the sketches I’ve done of you, none of them are right yet. The hair’s too clean, for one.”

Annoyance giving way to frustration, Severus burst out, “I can’t help my looks, Lily, and if you don’t like them don’t draw them. I don’t care about my hair. There are much more important things I can do, rather than wittering about with creams and soaps in the bathroom and primping in the mirror. Would you stop nagging me?”

 

Lily was startled. “I didn’t meant to imply---Sev, I was just trying to say you clean up well, I was teasing. Okay. Christ.”

They spent the rest of the ride in silence. Severus stewed in self-pity. He had been an ugly boy, but had thought he had aged into some dignity. Sturgis certainly thought so. Inured to the taunts and giggles of his students, Severus had thought himself immune to the carelessness of beautiful girls. It seemed Lily was an exception. He was disturbed. She still looked sixteen, spell creation or not, and while she was at the age of consent he had no interest in immaturity. Charity told them, in their last conversation, that he was emotionally stunted. He was not emotionally stunted enough to become a pedophile. He would bask in her presence, he would pay her tribute, but he would not let himself fall in love. He was not in love. He loved her, and he was surprised, that dream-summer, how fulfilling he found her presence.

He kept in touch with his Slytherin friends (unfortunately deaged, bespelled, in an alternate dimension, whatever), discussing politics and art with Narcissa, who was in France with her family; Ministry business with Augustus, who had just been hired to the Department of Mysteries and was being frustratingly opaque and smug about his new position; and life and love with Lucius, who commended him on his mature outlook on romance. Lucius was finding it difficult to find a partner, and his father was pressuring him to marry as soon as possible. Oddly enough, Narcissa hinted at similar pressures; but, never a gossip, she kept mostly to rhapsodic descriptions of Versailles and her dismissal of applying dialectical materialism to Wizarding Europe. The Americans, she said, were fair game.

He ignored a rather filthy letter from Wilkes, but was ashamed to note it turned him on. Wilkes, like Lucius, was similarly frustrated. Unlike Lucius, he was not too stiff to do something about it. He was still a sixteen year old boy, and would become a Death Eater. There would be no saving him--but what about Lucius?

Mr. Shafiq allowed him to brew in the basement of the shop on weekends, as long as he paid for the ingredients he used. His Wiggenweld Potion was commended, and the Draught of Peace particularly praised--Dumbledore sent him on to the Ministry. Professor Slughorn arrived at the Evans house in early July, as portly and beaming as ever in a lime green seer-sucker suit and gray bowler and pocket square. He looked quite dapper, and absolutely wrong in the respectably working class streets of Cokeworth. Lily and Severus hurried him in.

“Splendid, splendid,” Horace beamed, examining the Evans’ sitting room, pausing at a hypnotic abstract painting Lily had done in honor of her first menstrual cycle. “Fascinating. Muggles are quite creative, aren’t there? What is this supposed to mean?”

Lily and Severus shared a look of horror. She rushed to say, “Professor, we’ve made you tea, if you don’t mind,” and Severus led him into the kitchen, where he had prepared a magnificent spread catering to Horace’s non-magical favorites. Twenty-five years of knowing a man, particularly a gormand such as Slughorn, had gone into the preparation of this suite. Horace positively glowed when he saw it, and they set to eating.

Iced elderflower tea he had brewed himself, pineapple scones, spicy mango chutney sandwiches and a light Tuscan-style soup: Severus was proud of what he’d done. He didn’t have an opinion on cooking, not really, it was something he had to do when he was hungry and the house elves did not meet his requirements, and it was something he was good at. He derived some enjoyment from it, of course, he liked working with his hands and profiting from the fruit of his labor. He awaited Horace’s judgement.

“Not traditional, my boy, but good,” Slughorn pronounced. “Now, we’ll have to get you to the Ministry in half an hour Rookwood said he would be willing to show you around his department, if there’s time enough after your exam. Would you be able to arrange transport with him?”

“Yes,” Severus said, “I’m staying with Lucius Malfoy at his flat in London overnight---he’s staging a housewarming party, with the usual Slytherins.”

“Ah, you’ll have to tender young Mrs. Lestrange my congratulations,” Slughorn said, and actually laughed at the face Severus made.

“What, what’s funny?” Lily asked.

 

Slughorn chuckled, “Never you mind, my dear, Severus never quite hit it off with the former Miss Black. Particularly as they are both of the ‘hex first, ask second’ temperament. Excusable for her as a stressed seventh year, but questionable in a first year.”

Severus passed a hand over his eyes. He remembered. “We both get up very early. I was passing through the common room, heard some rustling, and hit her with the toenails hex. She returned with a Blasting Curse, and between the two of us we woke up the entire House.” And Bella had lost face, and he had attracted Lucius’ interest, Rookwood’s notice, and grudging respect for his blood-obsessed yearmates. He should’ve just pretended to be unconscious.

Lily was nonplussed. “Isn’t Bellatrix---”

“Bloody insane? Yes,” Severus answered. “First year was...difficult.”

Slughorn finished eating. Patting crumbs away from his face, he said, “Well, Mr. Snape, we should be off.” They stood, and Lily walked them to back alley. Horace offered him his arm and they apparated off.

 

The Ministry was bustling as usual, shepherding the wizarding sheep of Britain around, keeping them busy so no progress would actually be achieved. Horace took him to level six, an agonizing three levels higher than the Department of Mysteries, and set him to testing. The theory was easy---he had his third years answering questions like these. Oddly enough, the practical section required him to brew the Draught of Peace and the Wiggenweld Potion. This time, he reduced the amount of valerian in the former and added a sprig of spearmint, to refresh of the mind. If taken in conjunction with the Wiggenweld, the consumer would feel a renewed sense of purpose, and absolute determination to accomplish their current task. He knew from experience that it was addictive, and had not found any counter but abstinence to cure that particular property. He left, confident in his Outstanding, and took the lift down three levels. Rookwood was waiting for him.

“Snape!” he greeted. “You’re out early.”

Of course he was out early. Slughorn had given him the answers, and he had a good thirty years’ experience of knifework to make preparing ingredients efficient. He shrugged, not sure how to respond. “The exam was simple.”

Rookwood clapped him on the back, a little too hard. If Severus had actually been sixteen, he would have stumbled. Instead, he drew himself up straighter. “Shall we go?” He gestured. Rookwood sighed. A brief glance into his eyes, a mental Legilimens! let him know he was cursing this greasily arrogant half-Muggle that Lucius had taken under his wing, but greedy for whatever repayment he could request, for such an exclusive tour. Charming.

“Indeed,” Rookwood smiled, face almost fading into a grimace. “Welcome to the Department of Mysteries.”


	6. Deja Vu

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: Well, one more damn chapter til we wrap up the summer. I really didn’t expect this to take six chapters and 20,000+ words. I didn’t expect this story to be more than 10,000 words. Reviews do make me work faster. I can’t believe this story’s getting so complicated, but I did promise myself a deconstruction….  
> On romance in this story: I haven’t decided how Lily’s story is going to play out. I do read her as demisexual, though, and not particularly well-informed when it comes to prophylactics. She and Severus love each other, but Severus is not healthy. She’s mature enough to be more aware (and responsible) about his mental health than he is, and intelligent enough to be wary of his newfound maturity. But we know from canon she likes bad boys. Still, attraction does not imply action. As for Snape? He really doesn’t want to fuck a sixteen year old girl, especially if he thinks his mind is being hacked by dark magic. One thing we know about him, he doesn’t want to risk corruption his soul. I chose the Hurt/Comfort tag for a reason. Severus needs to sort his head out first, and this chapter will explore that.  
> On the portrayal of Lucius Malfoy: I think Malfoy genuinely likes Snape, but consciously manipulates his insecurities and emphasizes his worst traits to bring him into the Death Eaters. Snape’s always been acknowledged; Malfoy’s going to take any validation Severus gets from a non-Slytherin source and turn it into something dirty, similar to how Lily and Sirius treat his relationships with his housemates. He also has a point; Lily is never seen letting Severus defend himself, but Severus also patronizes her, never can give consistent proof, and refuses to give a definite statement that he cares about her, does not believe in blood supremacy, and will not let his passion for dark magic draw him into the Death Eaters. It goes down to that: Lily was right to protect herself and get out of a toxic situation, but she was also unwilling to help Severus figure out a more positive support system. But she was only a sixteen year old girl, and a judgmental one at that. (but who isn’t, at sixteen?)  
> Geordie slang taken from a somewhat satirical Guardian article and a lovingly-low tech English-to-Geordie translator.  
> The translation of “The Wanderer” is by Jeffrey Hopkins. It was so beautiful, I had to include probably too many excerpts. I heartily recommend reading it. It reminds me of Snape, post Book 6, walking grimly into Book 7, and is the poem that Tolkien based Aragorn’s lament for Rohan on. Truly beautiful stuff.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don’t own anything but my words.
> 
> Content warning: Racism and xenophobia; dismissal of emotional abuse (Snape is an asshole); stalking and sexual harassment; codependency (everyone is problematic).

They Call This Closure?

The atrium was tiled in black, mortar growing softly blue in the torchlight. Severus was immediately plunged into memories of the Slytherin common room at night, the Dark Lord’s fireplace at the Riddle House, the eerie look in Dumbledore’s eyes when he heard there were dementors at Privet Drive. He swallowed a breath. Rookwood, smirking, moved forward, and with a wave of his wand, the tiles melted into a doorway.

“What’s your research about?” he asked.

Severus cleared his throat. “I’m interested in the intersection of hallucinatory spells and potions-work, particularly how they lay open the soul to manipulation. To brew the essence of fame---if we are able to bottle insanity, why can we not do it to fame, where a drop of blood and a spritz into a crowded room creates immediate, awe-full obsession? Can we put a stopper in death? Bottle the Unforgivables? The Killing Curse is Dark because it steals the soul for its castor’s purposes; if one can separate the soul, can we store it? Is that possible? Mind-body dualism has little logic to it, but---”

“Would you like to see the Death Room, then?” Rookwood interrupted. Severus’ lips thinned. He had hoped to find something of an intellectual equal in Rookwood; the first time around, Severus had been awed by his attention. It seemed like that would have been the most politick tact to take. “I’ve been appointed examination of this room with the favor of the Dark Lord himself,” well that was abrupt, “and my Ministry superiors, of course.” Revealing deadly and disastrous information like that, how had he ever managed to stay undercover? Did everyone already assume he would join the Death Eaters? Rookwood looked satisfied as Severus’ mute face. Smug, he continued, “On the linguistic basis, of course. There are some carvings, they resemble Pictish Ogham.”

“Are they Pictish Ogham?” Severus interrupted.

“If they were, don’t you think we would have it translated already?”

“Perhaps.”

“Well, Professor Babbling hasn’t been able to recognize the markings, but I hypothesize they have some relation to the Phaistos Disk. There are Cretan hieroglyths mixed with the Ogham.” Rookwood led them into a room full of swinging doors and pointed his wand at the upper penultimate right one. It swung open. They stepped through it, and through two more sets of rooms. Finally, they stopped in a room full of dull, gray light. On the dias was a monumental archway, a tattered black cloak stretched in between. Death’s cloak?

Rookwood grabbed his arm as he drew closer, holding him back. Severus instinctively shoved him away, but Rookwood held his arm out, preventing him from moving forward. “Snape. Careful. For that, I should let you go, but we’ve already lost one intern this week. There’s a powerful compulsion enchantment weaved into the Cloak.”

“However did you get someone close enough to sample?” Severus asked, eyes fixated. He could hear Albus’ voice, calling, but couldn’t make out the words.

“A well-timed Accio. Unfortunately, we lost the intern.”

The carelessness of wizards would never cease to disgust him. He felt the borders of his mind melt and snap back into order, he was thirty-six years old, the year was 1996, the month was June, he could not remember the day, but he had promised Albus to be his spy, his cover was not necessarily blown, what would happen to the war effort without their spy? The Death Eaters were still underground, they had no one else to send. Slytherin House would fall into total disrepair, more than it had already, with that awful pink bitch undermining his every move. He could hear Albus’ voice, sorrowful now: “Severus...please. Severus, please. Severus, please.” He thought of duty, and shouted, “Expecto patronum!” Rookwood cursed, and dragged him out of the room as his doe bounded through the Veil.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” he shook him by the robe. Snape’s vision suddenly split, Albus was standing in the Department of Mysteries, looking older than Severus had ever seen him, and his blue eyes widened and mouth opened as the doe faced him, “Severus, thank Merlin, come home,” and he fought Rookwood to get back to the Veil, but Rookwood shoved his wand in his face and everything went suddenly, brilliantly red.

 

Severus woke up wanting to weep, certain he had failed at any attempt of redemption and disappointed his only friend living, still stuck in the web of Death’s Veil. He needed to get a cast of the inscriptions of the archway, but as he made to get up, his head let out a splitting warning, and he fell back heavily. Closing his eyes, he tried to figure out where he was: a soft cot of some sort, where was Rookwood?

“The Dark Lord should be advised on his instability and arrogance,” Rookwood was saying, “he attacked me, trying to get to the Veil. The mudblood’s got a deathwish.”

Lucius’ voice smoothly responded, “Which we can mold to our own purposes. If he is so eager to confront Death, we can plant him in the Death Room. The Dark Lord needs another person in the Department of Mysteries since you so failed---”

“I didn’t know mentioning my interest in Astronomy would place me in the Space Room---”

“---and Snape is a natural adept at Legilimency. Train him in Occlumency, to resist the charm, and the Dark Lord can use him to explore the afterlife. Especially if we can successfully place a tethering charm on him.”

“He can cast a fully corporeal Patronus, Lucius, I’m not sure he’s got enough of the Art in him to join us.”

“Severus is versatile. You’d be surprised. Under that bitter anger is a mad soul looking for vengeance, and even below that is an artist looking for glory. He’s obsessed with getting the proper recognition, pity about the looks. And general demeanor. Can’t even play nice to get what he wants. But he’s a good kid, all the same. I like him.”

Rookwood snorted. “He’s mad.”

“So’s Bella.”

“Bella’s a damn sight nicer to look at, and pure beside.”

Severus shifted, head ringing. He must’ve hit his head after Rookwood Stupefied him, that asshole. He opened his eyes and saw a very bright ceiling. “Ugh,” he enunciated, and closed his eyes.

Someone helped him into a sitting position and put a vial to his lips, and he recognized the smell of willowbark and rosemary indicating a Headache Relief potion, not so expertly brewed, but it would do. He grabbed it and drank it, reflecting that the bitterness of the willow could easily be remedied with a sprig of peppermint, and that the rosemary was dried, not fresh. The pain receded, and as he opened his eyes the light dimmed from blinding to the more sensible afternoon sun.

“Where am I?” he asked.

Lucius sat next to him. He was on a lounge of some sort. “My new apartment. Rookwood floo’d you over.” Severus had to close his eyes again at that. It was very risky, to send an unconscious body through the Floo.

Rookwood grasped Lucius’ arm. “I’ll come by later.” He left. Severus reclined, head in hands, weary. Lucius was surveying him.

“Are you alright?” he asked. Severus’ gut twisted. Lucius was his friend, an old friend, but it had taken them years to work towards equality. Aiding each other in subtle ways in the late ‘70s, to avoid active violence in Death Eater raids, and then brainstorming ways to save Slytherin, to keep it proud in the face of adversity: through guilt and fear, pride and self-preservation, they had become comrades. Even then, he could never trust him. He thought Lucius assumed he was playing for his own side, using Dumbledore much in the same way that Lucius used the Ministry. But at this point, in the summer of 1976, Severus was the idiot savant half-Muggle, good with his wand and better with a cauldron, and to be cultivated into a vassal, more influence in the Dark Lord’s outer rings. Why did everyone assume he would join the Dark Lord? Well, he had, hadn’t he. Lily had been right to leave him. “Severus?”

“I need to go back to the Death Room,” Severus said. He needed to talk to Dumbledore, his Dumbledore, he had heard him begging for him, begging for him to fulfill his word and come home. He had sworn on the love Lily had showed him that he would be Dumbledore’s man, through and through, and time had tempered the alliance from necessity into a friendship and partnership. Dumbledore was the father and grandfather he never had, who showed him mercy and the power of redemption. Slughorn had given him a chance, and he had thrown it away like a fool. Dumbledore had offered him a way back into the light. He felt suddenly, desperately, so alone, so far from home---a dimension away.

“Severus Alexander Snape,” Lucius said, “do you hear me?”

Severus was occluding, blurring the pale gradations between Lucius’ hair and face, blowing up contrast until there was no gray left. His hand was shining against the black. Suddenly, he was confronted with the glowing mess of Lucius’ face, and whiteness filled his vision.

“You’re all...blank,” he heard him say. “Severus? Severus Alexander?”

He hated that name. Outlines leaked back in, giving shape to the light. Dark holes pinpricked into the morass that was Lucius’ face, then another circle around them, and finally eyelids became defined, the shadows of his nose, white became blue and green and pink, the tracing of his veins around the corner of his jaw. Severus took a deep breath, and the world remained monochrome, but gained shades of gray.

Lucius was staring at him, aghast. “What was that?” he asked.

“Occlumency,” Severus said shortly, and stood up. His robes did not billow impressively behind him, because he was not wearing robes, but his nicest pair of muggle trousers, his nicest button-down, and his mother’s cloak. “When are the others arriving?”

“Not for another two or three hours. Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Your concern is...touching,” Severus sneered, “but I assure you, I am fine. Seduced, perhaps, by the oldest of magics---the exploration of the afterlife, but I remain tethered. I am fine.”

Lucius’ mouth quirked. “If you’re well enough to be that verbose, I must take you at your word.”

“Gan fuck yorself,” Severus let his voice slip from its Received Pronunciation and into a parody of Geordie, “or I'll fettle ye.”

“Tsk, so low class,” Lucius was amused, “we’ll have to beat the Prince back into you.”

Severus sighed. “Bella’s coming, isn’t she?”

“But of course. She honeymooned in Capreae, I couldn’t avoid her. Anyway, how dreadful have the muggles been?” Lucius took the time to drape himself across the lounge. For a second, Severus was absurdly reminded of that Manet painting, Olympia, of the proudly nude woman glinting on her white chaise-lounge. Did that make him the servant? Muggle word racism didn’t quite parallel neatly into the British Wizarding World, he dismissed that train of thought and resolved to bring it up with---not Dumbledore, Lily he supposed, if a sixteen year old girl from lower middle class Cokeworth were able to articulate a valuable response. “Severus?”

Severus snapped to focus. He grimaced. “Well, I lost my temper with my father and attempted to kill him, so he beat the crap out of me as my mother watched and sighed. I’ve been staying with a mixed-muggle household in the area.”

“So, very dreadful?” Lucius asked, hand over his face. Severus suspected he was laughing at him.

“It wasn’t bad,” Severus said honestly. “I provoked him.” Tobias shouted first, threw things second, and only started hitting if anything broke. It just so happened that was broke was his face. “I made a very good effort into beating his brains out.”

“Your mother must have been so proud,” Lucius said drolly.

“Oh, she was. She told me I was full of horseshit and stormed out. I think she’s been shagging the postman.”

“Charming. Who are you staying with? A halfblood family?”

Severus looked at Lucius and saw the gray in his eyes, the slight flush of pink at his cheeks, the blue veins lacing around the edges of his jaw. How young he looked: he was shook by tenderness.

“Oh, no. Not the Evans girl. You have such a...strange relationship with her, Severus, you’re always arguing. She never listens to you, she never thinks you might know better than her--and about the Wizarding World. Severus, she’s a mudblood---”

“Don’t use that word,” Severus said sharply.

Lucius scoffed. “I’m calling it as it is, Snape. She’s an uppity mudblood who thinks she can make the Wizarding World conform to her own barbaric, simplistic notions of good and evil and culture, throwing away thousands of years of tradition and growth.” He swung his legs off the lounge and sat up. “Severus. She’s a stupid bitch. Disrespect. Doesn’t know her place. Why don’t you---”

“Then what am I then?” Severus’ eyes flashed. “Do I know my place? I’m half-Muggle, Lucius. The half-blooded Prince. My father named me. She’s always believed there’s good in me, that I have some intrinsic worth beyond blood status---”

Lucius stood up and put his hand on Severus’ shoulder. “You’re a Muggle-raised millrat halfblood who is standing in my posh Diurn Alley flat, and you think she’s the only one who thinks you have intrinsic worth? She values you on your muggle side only. She hates your magic. Look at the people she prefers to you, Severus. The werewolf? Sirius? Sirius is outright cruel, you’re just petty. That little pack of Gryffindor girls, who barely tolerate her---Narcissa wrote to me about how facile and empty they are. And she wants you to become as empty as them.”

Severus closed his eyes. “I don’t want to talk about the werewolf.”

“What, because of Dumbledore? Well, my father can tell him that he didn’t learn it from you, but Horace Slughorn looks after his own, and where he can’t act, we will.”

“I don’t want to talk about it, Lucius. Tell me how your summer was. So, Bella’s wedding, Narcissa told me Rosier tricked Rabastan into presenting the bridal gifts a full half hour early, how did he manage that?”

They spent the next few hours chatting about mutual friends and reminiscing on the shenanigans they had gotten into, during Severus’ first and second years. Lucius had taken the boy under his wing, saw a hint of worth in the admittedly unclean Muggle rat, and trained him into something useful, quick with a hex, faster with his tongue. Lucius liked to play Pygmalion, fancying himself a Slytherin in the style of Slughorn. Horace encouraged it, of course, he liked his little intra-house mentorships, and Severus had done much the same as Head of Slytherin. Of course, he’d fallen apart after Charity broke up with him, after Potter returned to the castle, and then the Dark Lord had returned, and he hadn’t had time to breathe, let alone work on the House again. He had to trust his prefects, even when they undermined him by going to Umbridge. They had to learn from their mistakes. He did. He couldn’t mollycoddle them.

Guests began to arrive: Narcissa, dazzling as ever, who kissed Lucius on the cheek and hugged him, while only giving Severus a quick peck; Avery, who shook Lucius’ hand awkwardly and grabbed Severus and immediately started telling him some garbled tale about Sirius Black; Regulus, whom Lucius pulled into his arms, and was then swept away by Narcissa; Rookwood again, who joined the Black cousins; Crabbe and Goyle, looking a little flustered as they came out of the Floo, robes oddly disarrayed; and Rosier, who ambled over to him and Avery and gave a much more coherent, succinct version of Avery’s tale. Sirius Black had been thrown out and was now living with the Potters. Severus was struck by the irony.

“Why?” he demanded. “Was Mommy a little too mean to him?”

Avery chuckled nervously. “Come on, Snape, Walburga’s terrifying. Bella takes her, you know…”

He didn’t. He had never met Walburga Black--Narcissa was the only one of that family he had ever been close to, though he coached Regulus through his OWLs.

Severus snorted. “It’s no wonder Black is so reckless, if he can’t take a few honest truths now and again. Someone needs to cut his overblown ego down to size.”

Rosier slung his arm around his shoulder; Severus instinctively flinched. Awkwardly he tried to relax. Avery handed him a drink from a floating platter: gillywater laced with just a few drops of the Elixir to Induce Euphoria, appropriately garnished with spearmint, to prevent the singing. He had learned that the embarrassing way. 

“And that’s why we have you, our Half Blood Prince,” Rosier said fondly. “To remind the House that there are standards to be kept. Blood will out. Yours certainly has.”

The party was pleasant enough. The arrival of the Lestranges caused a stir, but Severus humored Lucius by staying out of Bellatrix’s way, joking with Crabbe and Goyle over the various tensions in the room. Bellatrix had not wanted to get married and had kept Lucius on a short lease for years, in some twisted manipulation she called love; but with Andromeda’s running off with a muggleborn, she had decided to outshine her sisters and fall very dramatically, very obsessively with the grand Rodolphus Lestrange, who was about fifteen years older than her. Goyle posited that she was secretly having it off with his brother, but Severus confirmed that Lucius was avoiding her. Narcissa, of course, was coldly furious with them all, and fussing over Regulus, determined to be the respectable one. She wanted to go into politics, but Crabbe thought her father would force her to get married first. Severus noticed without surprise that Lucius ignored Bella beyond pleasantries and focused on keeping Narcissa and Regulus comfortable.

“Oh, gossipping?” Rosier inquired.

“Information gathering and networking, Evan,” Severus said. “We’re Slytherins.”

Goyle laughed. Crabbe shifted on his feet, smiling awkwardly. He was always an appeaser.

Eventually, the party wound down, Lucius personally escorting Narcissa and Regulus to the Floo, which caused Bellatrix to storm off, husband swaggering after her---everyone knew Bella enjoyed angry sex the most, but this time around Severus had enough sense not to envy him for it. Finally, it came to the time for Lucius to apparate him home, dropping him off at Newcastle Wharf.

“Do try to stay out of trouble, Severus,” Lucius said. “And I’ll get on to Rookwood about any openings in the Department of Mysteries.”

Severus grasped his arm. “Thank you,” he said. Lucius stepped away and faded into the shadows of the Alley, quietly apparating away. Severus squared his shoulders and headed off towards the train station. He was going to spend most of next year in the Restricted Section.

 

He let himself into the Evans’ house. Lily was curled up on the couch in the living room, hair haloed by the table lamp. She closed her book, finger marking her place, and smiled. “You’re home early.”

He shrugged and slid next to her. “That lot gets wearying, after a time.”

“Yeah. Potter came back today and told me Black was staying with him, and if I needed any place to go I could always rely on him, paragon of Gryffindor virtue.”

Severus snorted. “Yes, all because his mother told him off for being a reckless, murdering fool and threatened to ship him to Azkaban personally if he didn’t shape up. No wonder---”

“Murdering?” Lily, sliding a parchment letter between the pages, put down her book. “What are you talking about?”

Severus stared at her, surprised. There was no guile in her eyes, just honest confusion. “Over the Shrieking Shack, of course---I told you about this---when Black tried to kill me!”

Lily flushed. “I thought---”

“What,” Severus said dangerously, “that I was exaggerating? Black tricked me into the Shack, and I found a fully-transformed werewolf there. I would’ve died if Potter hadn’t realized it would get him thrown in Azkaban as an accomplice and dragged me out of there.”

Lily bit her lip and looked away.

“What, did you think Potter did it out of some sense of heroism? I assure you, he was only thinking of saving his own skin---”

“He told me you were going to get Remus expelled,” Lily muttered, pushing her hair back. “Does that mean---”

“The Headmaster forbade me to tell anyone. He threatened to expel me. I’d just been attacked by a werewolf, and he assigned me detention---nevermind that Potter had been in on it all along, that Black was smugly unrepentant that he nearly killed me. No, of course not, Potter’s little furry friend was more important than the life and health of some sneaking Slytherin.”

Lily put her head in her hands, and then combed through her hair. She released a ragged sigh. “Well, Potter’s a toerag, confirmed. I just thought…”

Suddenly, Severus understood. He understood that Potter had styled himself as mature, saving that creepy greasy Slytherin who was always trying to get him into trouble, seducing Lily with lies of his good nature. He understood that Lily had fell for them. He understood that Lily had wanted to fall for them. He looked at her and understood, suddenly, that she saw the good in everyone---and was desperate to see it in Potter. She wanted a excuse to take him and be with him, as much as she wanted an excuse to get rid of him. He got up abruptly.

“Sev, where are you going?”

He let the door slam shut and wandered out. The night was crisp, there was a taste of the sea on the air. He left the well-kept houses of Cokeworth and crossed the river, reaching, finally, the dirty street of Spinner’s End. He paused by his house, but kept walking, past the long-dead textile mill that had not run since he was a baby, out of the urban and gradually into the weeds. He curled up under a tree, sheltering from the stars, and refused to think. 

Still, his mind hounded him. Looking up at the dimness between the latticework of the leaves, he murmured, “Stars, hide your fires;/Let not light see my black and deep desires./The eye wink at the hand, yet let that be/Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.” Macbeth, Filius Flitwick’s favorite play, he had helped with the arrangement for the Frog Choir, which he had sang in himself, as a student. He wanted so desperately to hurt someone. 

Severus curled more tightly into himself. A wind rustled the leaves of the tree, he hugged himself, but did not shiver. He was being melodramatic. All his life, he had lived as fifth or sixth on his loved ones’ list of priorities: below their lovers, their family, themselves, always. He had always struggled with himself to put Lily first, to follow Dumbledore’s rules beyond his own comfort, to try and gain Dumbledore’s respect--to show that he was worth of their respect. He knew he wasn’t worth of their love. But it hurt to be so abruptly reminded how little she regarded him. She had been his best friend, had become his guiding light, the symbol of the good he wished to do, behind the scenes, through the best of Slytherin spying. What was he to her? The greasy little neighbor boy, Snivellus Snape, the charity case. Not an equal, never an equal. He had never been considered anyone’s real equal.

He always hoped that Order of Merlin, posthumous or not, would show them all that he was worthy of respect. He knew he obsessed over recognition, pushing his students two years ahead of the national curriculum, turning Slytherin into a well-oiled house cup winning machine for a full six years---he wasn’t a good teacher, he didn’t enjoy, but he’d be damned if he didn’t get results. The wind rushed his hair out of his face, branches twisting over his head. He rubbed his eyes hard, and then stood up. Rain was coming. It was time to go back. He’d talk to Slughorn about an internship with the Veil, and scheme with Rookwood to get a cast of the sigils. He was no longer on professional turns with Bathsheba Babbling, being on another plane, another universe, living out his own purgatory, whatever the fuck it was, but he could use Lily or some bright-eyed Slytherin and get them to ask her questions, instead. He’d figure it out. He had no other option but to keep moving.

Lily was sitting out on the steps when he came back. Her eyes were glittering, hair aflame in the weak porchlight. He was struck by the mundanity of the scene: a teenage girl waiting for her best friend to come back after quarrelling. But this girl would barely grow into a young woman who would vanquish the Dark Lord, the first time around. He stopped a foot short of the steps, shadow looming over her. He felt the sudden urge to kneel at her feet, bury his head in his lap, reach up and gently, barely, caress her cheek. She was so young.

“You’re still awake,” he said instead.

Lily bit her lip, but did not look away. “I fucked up,” she said miserably. “Was that why you were avoiding me?”

Severus sat down next to her. “You didn’t, but---”

Lily ducked her head, leaned against him, looked away. She was warm, a comfort to his side. Insecure, he worried that his bony elbows would hurt her loving flesh. “We really fucked this year up,” she said. “Talking past each other. I realize I didn’t listen, that I wasn’t listening as well as I thought I was. You’re just, you’re a lot to handle, you know?”

Severus swung his hair in front of his face. “Thanks a lot.” He was well-aware he was a fucked-up little creep. Charity didn’t let him forget it, though Sturgis made him feel like he was more interesting than that.

“No, I, well. Sev. You’re precious to me, but I feel like everyone’s been lying to me about the world is, and every time I think I can catch some truth, you show up to complicate it again, and I know sometimes you’re right, I’m naive, but you get so stuck in your negativity and I just---I was desperate for some good in the world.”

“You are telling me,” Severus said slowly, “that I am not part of that good.”

Lily jerked upright. “No!” she exclaimed. “I think you’re basically a decent person. I think you have an extraordinary capacity for good, sometimes. The way you look out for younger students...you’re brilliant and you’re funny, but, Sev, you can be such an asshole some of the time.”

“Some of the time?”

“Alright, most of the time. And I’m afraid of the things that happen to you. I’ve never hung out in the other side of the river.” Lily moved restlessly, stretched her arm. She spoke more quietly, “I never want to see that side. I’m afraid of it.”

“Poverty isn’t catching,” Severus said nastily.

Lily shot him a look. “I know. And I did go, I went once. To your house. And it scared me, and it shook me up, to see you that roughed up. Bruised. Like in the infirmary, when you were off your head, and afterward---I’d never seen you cry before. I didn’t think that anyone could get that---broken.”

Severus scowled at her doubtfully. “What are you trying to say?” He made to leave.

“I’m saying I’ve been naive, and that I’m sorry I haven’t been more compassionate. That I took Potter’s word over yours. That I haven’t trusted you. But you know, I’m only sixteen.”

His fingers ghosted over her face. Lily shivered but did not draw away. 

“I know,” Severus said softly. “I’m sorry.” He stood up. “I’ve been unfair to you, I’ve expected too much from you.” He looked at Lily.

“Well, I’m not going to deny it,” she said, and quirked a smile. He gave her his hand, and helped her up.

“You’re not perfect,” he continued, “but you’re a far better person than I am. I wish I could be as kind as you are, but it’s not in my nature. I can’t...open myself to people like you do, Lily. I can’t ask them to meet me like you do, I follow them instead. I always have. And I’ve followed you for far too long. You’re my conscience.”

Lily was smiling now, a little watery. “Sev---”

“I want to make you proud of me,” Severus said. “I want Dumbledore to be proud I went to Hogwarts. I want a prime photo on Slughorn’s mantlepiece. I want people to recognize me on the street and respectfully move out of my way, I want to master dark magic and cure lycanthropy.” A shadow of a smile settled on his face. “I want to prove myself. Not principles, I don’t care about ethics. But you make me want to care. You’ve always made me want to be a good person. But kindness and...charity weren’t fairy gifts at my christening. I wasn’t made that way. I don’t come from people made that way.”

“Oh, stop that!” Lily exclaimed. “This is Potter’s ‘because he exists’ bullshit all over again. You’re not a psychopath, Sev. I had my worries sometimes, but these past few months, you’re back to being you again, it’s been chill, we haven’t been arguing, have you noticed? It’s been great. You’ve really matured.” Twenty years would do that.

“It took me too long,” he said, it took him far too long to accept that they had been children, that he had been damned by upbringing and circumstance to feel his failures more keenly, that he at least had a chance to be redeemed. Lily didn’t even get a chance to realize her mistakes, to even learn to consider Potter a mistake. He closed his eyes. He wasn’t going to think about Potter. “I’m really fucked up,” he confessed.

“I never noticed,” Lily deadpanned.

“Shut up. And I know it may be unfair of me to ask---but please don’t lose faith in me. I can change.” He touched her face again. Her lips parted slightly, surprised. “I have changed.” They stared at each other, Severus firmly occluding, resisting any urge towards legilimency. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, he cleared his throat. “I have work tomorrow.”

“Oh right,” Lily said, flushing. She leapt to open the front door. “You should go to bed. How was the exam?”

They chatted about the Potions NEWT, about Slughorn’s charming corruption, and about her day. She had spent it arguing with Potter and angrily painting, finally giving it all up in disgust and ransacking the library. She had come home with a book of Anglo-Saxon poetry, a bilingual Penguin edition, and, before they went to their separate bedrooms, read to him:

 

Often the lonely receives love, /The Creator’s help, though heavy with care/Over the sea he suffers long/Stirring his hands in the frosty swell,/The way of exile. Fate never wavers.  
The wanderer spoke; he told his sorrows,/  
“At dawn alone I must/Mouth my cares; the man does not live/Whom I dare tell my depths/Straight out. I see truth/In the lordly custom for the courageous man/To bind fast his breast, loyal/To his treasure closet, thoughts aside./The weary cannot control fate/Nor do bitter thoughts settle things./The eager for glory often bind/Something bloody close to their breasts.  
“Wretched, I tie my heart with ropes/Weary, I crossed the confine of waves,/Sought the troop of a dispenser of treasure,/Far or near to find the man/Who knew my merits in the mead hall,/Who would foster a friendless man,/Treat me to joys. He who has put it to a test/Knows how cruel a companion is sorrow/For one who has few friendly protectors./Exile guards him, not wrought gold,/A freezing heart, not the fullness of the earth./He remembers warriors, the hall, rewards,/How, as a youth, his friend honored him at feasts,/The gold-giving prince. Joy has perished,/  
“He knows how it is to suffer long/Without the beloved wisdom of a friendly lord./Often when sorrow and sleep together/Bind the worn lonely warrior  
“When the mind ponders the memory of kinsmen;/He greets them with joy; he anxiously grasps/For something to say. They swim away again./The breasts of ghosts do not bring the living/Much wisdom. Woe is renewed/For him who must send his weary heart/Way out over the prison of waves./  
“Therefore in this world I cannot think of a reason/Why my soul does not blacken when I seriously consider/All the warriors, tested at war,/How they suddenly sank to the floor,/The brave kinsmen. But this world/Every day falls to dust.  
From times far away the wanderer recalls/The deadly slashes and says,/“When the mists darken/And night descends, the north delivers/A fury of hail in hatred at men./All is wretched in the realm of the earth;/The way of fate changes the world under heaven./Here is treasure lent, here is a friend lent,/Here is a man lent, here is a kinsman lent./All of the earth will be empty!”  
“So spoke the wise in heart; he sits alone with his mystery./He is good to keep faith; grief must never escape/A man’s heart too quickly unless with his might like a true/warrior/He has sought a lasting boon. It is best for him who seeks love,/Help from the heavenly Father where all stands firm.”

He looked at Lily when she finished. “Thank you,” he said simply, and when he finally fell asleep he did not dream.


	7. Last Days of Summer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: This ballooned into another monster chapter. We finally get some Snape-Potter interaction, and more about the Evans family. And we’re earning our M rating, please don’t hate. The sex actually does further the plot, and what happens here does not mean commitment, the two characters hooking up just leave it as a hookup. They don’t really have a choice, and you’ll find out why halfway through the chapter. The characters in the pub are not OCs and are important to the plot. Kudos to anyone who guesses who they are and how that’s going to advance the plot.  
> Severus strikes me as somebody who operates on a very slow burn when it comes to romantic love. With Lily being harassed, he doesn’t want to make things worse, and besides, he’s still unsettled by how young he looks in the mirror. What happens here is an attempt, successful or not, by him to orient himself in time and maturity. He hasn’t made any commitments except to Dumbledore, but that will change.  
> Speaking of changes, I changed tags---I ended up taking this much more seriously than I meant to. I’m still putting something ridiculous in each chapter. The sex is also a deconstruction of most SexGod!Snape fics I’ve seen. I hope it makes you laugh. I don’t do heterosexual sex, so let me know if it’s believable. For more on Florence and the uncomfortable circumstances in which Snape lost his virginity the first time around, check out my fic, July 1977.   
> We’re also officially going on a biweekly posting schedule! Alas, real life intervenes. I’ll do my best to keep to it.
> 
> Disclaimer: Huh, don’t own Harry Potter. The idea of Emmeline Vance being the same peer group as Snape & the Marauders comes from a story called “The Trains in This Country are a Disgrace,” and can be found on JOdell’s redhen-publications website, fully illustrated. Check it out! It features my second favorite depiction of Ron Weasley.
> 
> Content Warning: Consensual sex between two people technically of age; tense and emotionally unavailable family; Snape’s quasi-libertarian politics; Snape viciously triggering Sirius; stalking, sexual harassment, and bullying.

They Call This Closure?

Working at the shop was surprisingly soothing. The Newcastle locals were generally good customers, quick and only as chatty as Mr. Shafiq allowed them. The local pub was excellent. He went there for his half-hour lunch break, to enjoy a quick brew and a well-stacked sandwich. Mr. Evans had remarked, in his usual removed way, the he was gaining weight. Lily assured him this was a good thing.

Things had been oddly tender since their conversation on the porch. Severus felt oddly naked around her now, flayed by her eyes, and he noticed she wasn’t touching him as much as she used to. He felt oddly bereft, but told himself it was for the better---he was thirty-six, and he still hadn’t figured out what sort of entrapment he was in. He remembered Dumbledore’s plea and knew he had to come back.

The two of them were so cautious around each other, so polite, that Mr. Evans started avoiding them, lifting the newspaper higher when they ate meals. It got worse when Mrs. Evans came back. She had never liked Severus, and so he found himself curbing his tongue even more, cooking more elaborate meals, and washing and tying back his hair regularly. He stopped shaving as one single act of rebellion, however. Still, her nostrils would flare angrily whenever he got too close, as if she could smell the mill stink on him. She was always a little too close, supervising him washing dishes after meals, commenting on the way he flipped his eggs. The atmosphere of Severus’ home was always tense, thundercloud rolling in and booming, heavy in the air, but Lily’s family was brittle, and he did not want to be the one to break it.

Lily retreated to her room, where she would be “lovingly” lectured by her mother. She started joining him on his morning runs, working off nervous energy, though she didn’t join him in the usual push-ups and sit-ups and weightlifting he did afterward, preferring to stretch and rest under a tree, day dreaming. They didn’t talk much. Severus focused on getting back into shape: no wonder he’d lost so often to Potter’s gang as a kid, he was weak. He had whipped himself into fighting-ready this same summer, twenty years ago, he remembered, as a way to avoid his mother and disengage his father’s temper. His father had been dimly approving. Didn’t they used to wrestle a bit? But Severus would never have enough weight on him to win. He vaguely remembered a concussion: “a bit” was right. His father had called him a nancy-boy for losing, too. It was a neat way of avoiding Lily, too: he stuck to his side of the river and the woods. What a long time ago that way---literally another lifetime.

To be good at the Dark Arts, and the Defense thereof, one had to be in shape. The Daily Prophet came in with more and more dismal news, of mixed-blood businesses shuttering, investments in muggle tech dropping, muggleborns protesting they couldn’t find any jobs in the government. There were no disappearances yet---just more and more tension, more economic sanction, reports of nasty graffiti and hexing in the streets, but no major deaths yet.

Newcastle Wharf remained unmoved. Avoiding Mrs. Evans, Severus started staying out Friday and Saturday nights, lingering in the shop, talking politics with Mr. Shafiq, who was firmly for giving the pro-muggleborn faction a larger voice in the Wizengamot, despite his own position as a member of the Sacred Twenty-Eight.

“We need more innovation,” Mr. Shafiq said. “Wizarding thought stultifies, especially in the United Kingdom. Look at the muggles! They’ve stuck a man on the moon! And what are we doing?” He threw down the washcloth he was using to polish the countertops. “Selling the same ingredients and recipes over and over again. Imagine what an alchemist can do with moondust!”

In 1987, his NEWT sixth years joined the Herbology and Care of Magical Creatures students in synthesizing albino mimbulus mimbletonia with billywig wings and bundimum secretionary glands. Once alchemized, they juiced their creation, and named the resulting shimmery liquid moondust. Once drunk, it provoked vivid hallucinations of the reign of Ashurbanipal and forced its creator to speak in classical Arabic for two weeks, which no one but Professor Babbling and Defense instructor Khadija Ajaj understood, and which neither of them could speak. He had flunked all of them for the semester. Pomona had cried.

“Mm,” Severus grunted. He agreed that the Wizarding World needed more innovation, people who didn’t take “magic” as an explanation and could throw in proper scientific method. Potions led the charge towards integration, since magic could so easily be subsisted out, depending on what field one worked in. It required an active and logical mind, not foolish, showy wand-waving. He left the shop and wandered the Wharf, looking in at the Owl Post, the bookstore, and finally the Crooked Kettle. He settled in at the bar and ordered dinner. A few halfblood leather-clad wizards, variously in the mid-twenties and thirties, were playing darts; finishing his food, he took his beer and joined them. After losing the first game, he bought a round of drinks; conversation thus lubricated, he promptly won the second and third matches. He was good with sharp objects, even if he didn’t have quite the muscle memory at this point in time. He liked the beard; it aged him. He liked the beer; it make him loquacious.

He returned to the bar, ordering a new round, asking for a whiskey--neat--this time, gesturing with a finger. The bartender smiled at him. His newfound friends were righteously talking politics, about how the only muggleborn-owned business on Diagon Alley had its windows smashed. The owner, a Mr. Theodore Tonks, was considering closing, a shame for his family.

“Aye, and he’s just had a bairn as well,” one of them said knowledgeably. Severus’ eyes slotted to stare him down. Nymphadora Tonks? No one had mentioned that Andromeda had been pregnant when she left.

He sipped at his drink, enjoying the low burn warming his senses. The pub was pleasantly hot. There was a pretty younger witch in a close-fitting blue dress, rather 1940s-looking, cloak thrown over one shoulder. The victory rolls in which she caught her hair were definitely styled with witchcraft. She caught him looking. He raised an eyebrow and lifted his glass. Slowly she moved over.

“Sad about the Tonks business,” she said, “but to be expected. I bet you the Blacks are behind this.”

“The middle daughter’s all caught up with what, those Knights of Walpurgis,” one of his companions said, a bespectacled man in a green tartan tunic.

Severus snorted. “I know the Black sisters, they keep their family drama private. I doubt Bellatrix is behind it, better to look towards more extremist, non-Establishment factions.”

The vintage witch raised an eyebrow. “Slytherin, were you?”

“Indeed,” Severus bowed his head, “and proud. Cunning, ambitious, clever, and true---”

“As well as backbiting and malicious, pureblooded and posh,” interrupted the tartan tunic. He measured himself against Severus; he was a few inches taller, but Severus lifted his head sardonically and crossed his arms, drawing his wand. He tapped his wand boredly. The tunic continued, “What are you, a Burke?”

“Snape, actually,” Severus said pleasantly, “son of a mill worker on the wrong side of the Tyne. Slytherin’s more than blood, Tartan, it’s the ability and nerve to achieve greatness. And you are...what? A Hufflepuff?”

The vintage witch laughed. “They’re not all bad,” she said, smiling. “They’re particularly good finders.” In unison, the two surveyed the tartan. Severus sneered. The tunic puffed his chest out, stepped a bit closer, Severus tensed, and then the man burst out laughing.

“Oh, you Slytherins,” he said. “My name’s Atticus Flint. The first and only Hufflepuff of my family, I’m a total disgrace.” Severus, surprised, examined him closely. There was a passing resemblance at the jaw and shoulders to the notorious Marcus, who was his first and only student to fail all his NEWTs. He had never heard of him, though, probably because he was a Hufflepuff.

The friend who knew about the Tonks baby, a good-looking man in a leather trenchcoat, slung an arm around him. “We forgive you, though,” he said. He kissed him sweetly. The woman with them, in full dragonhide robes, made an exaggeratedly disgusted face. Severus quirked an eyebrow at the vintage witch, who smiled lightly, moving a little bit closer. He was enjoying himself. He hadn’t had the time to hang around the local pub since before the Potter brat came to Hogwarts, before he made the mistake of getting involved with Charity. He didn’t recognize anyone’s faces, which was depressing, implying they had been driven out by the Death Eaters or the general economic decline brought about by the terror; he’d only started lurking at his local the summer of ‘86 or so. It had taken him years of Wilkes and Avery, Lucius, and then Lucie coaching him through parties for him to relax around strangers. He had tensed back up with Charity, who hadn’t liked any of his friends--somewhat understandable, most of them were accused Death Eaters. He really needed to stop falling into impossible situations with muggleborns.

The vintage witch’s name was Emmy, the leather witch was Dorrie, and Atticus’ partner introduced himself as Brod. “I don’t want to tell you my full name,” he said. “It’s one of those awful Wizarding names. Just Brod.”

Severus snorted. “It can’t be too bad. I’m Severus Alexander---my father thought he could channel the Roman Stoics by giving me his name.”

“Didn’t he die young and tragically, betrayed by his own guard?” Emmy asked.

“‘Severus Alexander,’” Dorrie mimed the quotations, shaking her head, “of course you sorted Slytherin, with a name like that.” Despite the group’s seeming penchant for nicknames, she did not try to truncate his name. Severus was being to find them more than a tolerable evening’s entertainment.

She ordered the next round--the cheapest elf-made wine on the menu for Emmy; Old Ogden’s for Severus, who was beginning to realize he was moving towards tipsy; a fascinating enchanted sea-themed cocktail for Atticus, which had gillywater and dulamon root making little waves in the glass; and a simple Guinness for Brod, who prefered to keep it classic. They abandoned the dartboard and moved to the booth. Severus kept close to Emmy, who seemed the least sentimental of the lot.

“I assume we’re all halfbloods,” Emmy said, swirling her wine idly. “Except you, Brod, your name has Walpurgisnacht written all over it. Did your pureblood parent--or grandparent--name you? I was given my muggle grandmother’s name--it’s not Latin or Latinate. Any thoughts on the emphasis on the old Roman stock, in the pureblood naming system?”

“Romanization bespokes gentility,” Atticus said, leaning forward. Brod kept his arm around his back. Sickening, Severus thought, with a flash of envy. “Most of the Sacred Twenty-Eight are so anxious to remove themselves from their barbarian British roots. A two thousand year old snobbery!”

“We’ve forgotten the magic inherent in our blood,” Severus said. “In our land. The untapped potential of indigenous magic could bring the fey kingdoms out of the mists, the leylines throbbing through the moors once more. We should be able to wrought craft with the spells the stones whisper. Not all non-Latin magic is...dark.”

Brod raised his eyebrows. “What are you advocating, then? You’re sounding rather---Arthurian-centric. Isn’t the regularization of British magic more fair for the International Confederation of Wizardry? It allows the French, the Bulgarian, the American to all speak the same spell language. For international cooperation---”

Severus interrupted, “Isn’t it unjust to force immigrant children to learn explicit Romano-English magic, at the cost of losing their parents’ traditions, their family’s entire language of spells? Particularly in households which hail from societies where the boundary between magic and mundane is more porous. We stultify our creativity by forcing assimilation without mutual integration. Magic and magical theory in this country is stuck in the Enlightenment. We need to harken back to the golden age of magic in the medieval and Renaissance, while embracing muggle science. Remember our traditions, but innovate with them. Open more schools, with specialty apprenticeships and muggle programs. Not every student should go to Hogwarts. Allow traditions beyond the Enlightenment consolidation of European magic to be taught, but encourage dialogue between the different styles and branches of magical theory.”

“Sounds utopian,” Emmy said. “How would you implement it?’

Severus raised an eyebrow. “Ideally? By restricting our bloated sybaritic government to the bare necessities of caucus and diplomacy, and leave the rest to the intellectuals.”

“How very Platonic,” Emmy sat back. “Listen, I work for the Ministry---”

“Who doesn’t?” Atticus said wryly. Severus let a bark of laughter out at that. Even Lucius worked for the Ministry---as a benefactor and adviser of course, but he still had a nominal title. “The Very Genteel Mr. Malfoy”: Severus couldn’t even think of it with a straight face. He took another sip of his whiskey, to bolster his shields, and inwardly applauded himself on being ironic.

Emmy rolled her eyes. “Point taken. I’m finishing up my auror training, and I can tell you that that the average Wizarding civilian should not be left alone to fester. Magic rots common sense; we need policy that forces us to work together for the common good. There are too few and too many wizards to leave to self-ru-le. Look at the Knights of Walpurgis and how they harass the muggleborn faction, the violence rising in Diagon Alley--Ted Tonks’ business and the Black family, they disowned Andromeda for marrying him, you know. Think of Bella Lestrange. You can’t tell me that these are just coincidences. We need more policing, more education---”

“How would you advise doing that?” Severus asked abruptly.

“Mandatory multicultural wizarding classes at Hogwarts, along with a mandatory and current Muggle Studies program for all seven years,” Emmy shot back.

Severus sighed. “And how would you choose what to teach? How would you gain the governors’ vote? You say I’m idealistic,” now that felt just wrong, “but---”

“Severus,” Dorrie interjected. “Drink your firewhiskey, it’s beginning to evaporate.” The table broke into laughter. Severus, feeling foolish, took up his smoking drink and downed it quickly. Emmy touched his arm, smiling. He glanced at her, flushing, and saw the apology and amusement in her eyes, a hint of worry. He let himself settle down, eyes following the swoop of her neck into her decolletage. Suddenly, he was acutely conscious of how closely they were sitting, her thigh pressed against his. His eyes darted back to hers. She patted his thigh, smiling, and the alcohol slowed his nerves. He leaned back, and she set her arm back onto the table, carelessly touching his. Shocked at himself, he did not move away.

The conversation continued, less tense now, into tales of Ministry bafflement. Dorrie was a Hit Wizard, considering quitting, and loved hedgewitchery and incantation---which did not gain her any lost love under Millicent Bagnold’s anti-Dark Arts administration. She complained about being arrayed by the Wizengamot for using a simple Speaking Stones spell to gain testimony about a murder done in York Minster Cathedral---“We didn’t have time for proper forensics, it’s a muggle tourist site, and we needed it reopened as quickly as possible, and I loath the Obliviators.” Brod shrugged. He was an Unspeakable at the Department of Mysteries. Severus mentioned he knew Rookwood, wasn’t he affiliated with the Knights of Walpurgis? It seemed the easiest way to point him towards finding the spy. He occluded very firmly, he was not going to think about prophecies when he had a pretty witch pressed against him, discussing politics with people whom he could speak freely, as of yet unaffiliated.

Brod was asking him, “...why, worrying about Ministry politics?”

Severus said very calmly, “I’m considering a career change.” He let them assume he worked full-time in Shafiq’s shop. He was an adult, really.

“Good for you,” Atticus said. “Don’t be a wastrel like me. Advance the march of progress, like Emmy and Brod here, and don’t be a vigilante like Dorrie.”

Dorrie rolled her eyes.

The conversation was winding down. “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore” was blasting on the jukebox, they were the last in the pub, and the bartender was washing glasses so furiously Severus was beginning to feel uncomfortable. He was sobering. Dorrie finally stood up and announced she had a long day. Brod and Atticus stirred, heading out. Severus stopped by the bathroom, pissed, drank a quick long draught of tap water, and splashed water onto his face. Droplets clung to his beard; studying his face, he bared his teeth at his reflection. He looked different, younger of course, but the beard gave him a bit of steadiness which his long, tyed-back hair made cool---and Poppy had to regrow his teeth after Potter and Black had smashed them out by the Lake so long ago, they weren’t so different, but less snaggletoothed, though the canines pointed distinctly outward. He dried his face quickly and headed out to the pub. Emmy was waiting in the lamplight, smoking a cigarette.

“Hey,” he said, settling close to her. He could feel her radiating onto his. He shivered, though the night was yet still.

She took a deep draft of her cigarette and pursed her lips, kissing the smoke out. It hissed out into a long spiral. Her cosmetic charms were beginning to wear off, hair coming loose from its pins, lipstick on the cigarette butt.

“The night’s young yet,” she said. “Like to stop by my place, for a cuppa? If it’s not out of your way.”

Certain that he would never see her again, Severus said firmly, “I would like to, yes. Let’s.”

 

Her flat was minuscule, really a studio apartment, muggle in function but littered with magical texts piled on precarious bookshelves. Severus was impressed. Kicking off his shoes, leaving them by Emmy’s, he investigated the books. There was the third edition of Magick Most Macabre and a copy of Blocking the Blocker: Shield Charms & Transfigurations that he remembered shoplifting at sixteen. He made a mental note to remember to write his textbook at some point, he was proud of Confronting the Faceless, and its use in the Auror program twenty years on let him live in relative financial comfort.

Emmy did actually put a kettle on. As she was flicking the stove on, Severus came up behind her and snaked an arm around her waist, and she twisted to meet him and kiss him. He let one hand roam, tracing the seams in her dress, the other playing at her neck, fisting into her hair, investigating her pins. They broke apart. She was smiling. Slowly, carefully, he pulled the pins from her hair.

She took the pins from his hand, leaving them on the kitchen counter, and snapped her fingers. The sofa flattened, readjusting into a bed, and Severus allowed her to push him towards it, push him down, enjoying the kissing without anxiety. He laid on the bed and watched her undo the clasp of her cloak, whisking it aside. She leaned over him and, taking his face with both hands, kissed him soundly. His hands found the zipper. Slowly he began to pull.

The kettle blew. “Fuck,” Emmy said, sitting back onto his legs. She tripped as she stumbled off the bed, hurrying to take the kettle off. Severus took his shirt off, reveling in his unmarked body. He closed his eyes. He’d never really had a one-night stand with a woman before. Dimly he hoped Lily wouldn’t wait up for him, to follow him on his nightly run. For a second, he wondered if she would feel betrayed---and then dismissed the thought, he was her houseguest, her best friend, and her mental senior by twenty years, It was best not to think about it.

Emmy landed on his lap, grinning, and Severus finished unzipping her and helped her pull it over her head. She was wearing a blue corset, confirming his suspicion that she went out to get laid tonight. Well, he would deliver, once he figured out how to get her out of it. It would be just like an auror to have the laces charmed. She rocked against his hips and his breath hitched; wildly he was terrified that he would come far too early, he did have the body of a teenaged boy, but with that came the ravenous hunger that could keep him pump him back up and keep him going. He pushed into a kiss, pushing her against the bed, hands playing into the corset, testing the ties, finding the hooks in the back, how the hell did this work?

Emmy sat up for a second. “Sorry, I forgot,” she muttered, “um, Alohamora!” Severus paused.

“Really?” he said. “An unlocking spell?”

“It was supposed to be sexy,” Emmy offered.

Severus kissed behind her ear, then down her neck, slowly working his way to her breasts. He helped her out of the corset and tossed it to the floor. “It,” nip at the jugular, remind her you’re a Slytherin, “has had,” down the clavicle, she shivered, “its desired,” right at the cleavage, her heart was beating fit to burst, “effect.” He traced around the swell of her breasts with a careful nail, then cupped them vigorously.  
“Aha,” Emmy sighed, “very nice, very nice.” She kissed him again, running her hands down his back, so he smoothed his down her sides, down to her knickers, blue lace. He hooked a finger around the waistband.

“May I?” he inquired.

“Yes take your fucking trousers off,” she breathed, pulling her knickers off.

“Mm, filthy-mouthed,” he teased, as she pushed him down and unzipped his trousers. He got out of his pants and met her eyes. She wanted to give him a blowjob. Merlin was he fine with that. He also picked up that her nipples didn’t become particularly sensitive until she came, and that she hoped he would figure that out because she wasn’t sure how to tell him without breaking the mood.

The mood did not break, even when Emmy attempted to maneuver seamlessly him riding her to her riding him, nearly knocking him off the bed instead, when he came early and switched to blowing her instead, or when she surprised both of them by squirting when she came.

“I didn’t even know I could do that! That vagina could do that!” she said. Severus actually laughed.

 

He woke up the next morning pleasantly entangled with a barely-known witch. In daylight, make-up gone, she confirmed his impression that her face was more intriguing than pretty. He liked her. Carefully, he left the bed and took a brisk cold shower, wordlessly casting a drying charm on his hair and a laundering charm on his clothes with the wand he had taken from Spinner’s End. He assumed he would circumvent the Trace, if it were placed on the body and not the soul---assuming if the body and soul were separate, which made no sense, philosophically, scientifically, and logically, he hated that Christian emphasis on mind-body dualism. These thoughts occupied him as he investigated her kitchen. It seemed the right thing to do, make breakfast for the woman who fucked you. It certainly wasn’t one of the more passionate shags he had had in his lifetime, but it was definitely one of the more fun.

He was just cracking an egg over the fry up when he heard her rustle, “You’re still here? And you’re cooking me breakfast? Careful, you’re acting like a keeper.”

Severus grunted. “Just being polite. I enjoyed last night. It’ll be ready in a few minutes.”

“Truly you are a gentleman among Slytherins.”

“I try.” As Head of House, one had to lead an example. Still nude, she ambled over and wrapped her arms around him. He turned to kiss her, lightly. He could feel her grin. “Ready for another go?”

“Not if breakfast is going to burn.”

They agreed they should let the food cool a bit, and Severus joined her for another shower, which they agreed was only sharing water. Severus did not deem it necessary to tell her he had already performed his morning ablutions. The food was still good, with a precise warming charm.

“Pity I’m being transferred,” Emmy said, spearing a mushroom with her fork. “I’d like to see you again. But they’re having me teach Defense at Hogwarts for a year, for PR reasons. Maybe over the winter holidays? If you don’t move onto something better than Shafiq’s shop.”

Severus calmly chewed and swallowed. He took a sip of tea. “Mm,” he said, raging at himself. He had assumed she was an auror trainee, about nineteen or twenty. Who had taught DADA his sixth year? Memory slotted into place: Emmeline Vance, one of the founding members of the Order of the Phoenix, later holder of a seat in the Wizengamot and leader of the Mundane Magic political party, which campaigned for overturning the Statute of Secrecy and assimilating wizardry into muggle society. He remembered the stately witch at Order meetings---she had certainly matured after the war, lost the levity that made her Emmy. He combed a hand through his hair nervously. He hadn’t known her well enough in his original timeline to know Emmy’s levity. Well, at least he was at the age of consent. “Yeah,” he said. What the fuck else was he supposed to say?

 

He took the Metro back to Cokeworth, walking the few blocks to Lily’s house. It was early, barely past 8 o’clock, and hopefully Lily would still be asleep, her mother would be, by any rate. Mr. Evans would have already headed to work. Hopefully no one noticed he was gone. Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully. As he drew closer to the house, he heard voices, male, heavy with swagger. His hand hovered over his pocket, where he kept wand and knife: Potter.

“She’ll have to let us in for breakfast, Prongs,” Black was saying. “She’s not rude. She won’t refuse a fellow Gryffindor hospitality.”

“But a Slytherin will.” Severus stood in front of the house. Potter and Black leapt up and drew their wands. “Put those away, this is a muggle neighborhood, you cretins.”

“Snivellus! You--creep! You’re stalking Evans!” Potter accused. He did not lower his wand.

Severu sneered. “I live here. Get out before I call the police.”

“I don’t believe you. You’re a wizard---Sirius, what’s the spell for revealing dark magic, he’s---”

Severus sighed. “Potter. I’m half-muggle. If you cast magic now, you’ll set off the Trace, and Lily would face the brunt of the consequences. Don’t. Now. Let me repeat: get the fuck away from my house, before I call the muggle police.”

A neighbor passed by. “How Sev, ya alreet?” he called cheerfully. “Tell Mark and the girls hello for me, right?”

Severus nodded. “Aye, Mr. Braithwaite, I’ll let them know.” Potter and Black were staring him, mouths agape. “Good Lord, you think I would lie about something so easily proven. No wonder you sorted Gryffindor.” He caught a flicker of motion in the corner of the eye: Lily was creeping along the side of the house, holding the house. She saw him looking, and gestured a finger over her lip. Shh. Smirking, he returned to the Gryffs. “Was it your sense of bloody-minded entitlement that lost you Slytherin, Black?” he continued, a dangerous caress to his voice. “Or the sheer disregard you hold for human life? Of course, the wolf doesn’t count, but it’s quite understandable that your family drew the line at attempted murder.” His eyes flashed. “Or were you trying to curry favor, harassing a half-muggle for beloved cousin Bella? I’ve heard she’s catapulted Andromeda and the baby into poverty, smashing up the Tonks shop. Is that why you’re here? Committing petty acts of vandalism? In the muggle world, we call that a hate crime.”

Black launched himself down the steps and through the gate, Potter hot on his heels, fists scrabbling. Lily jumped out and turned on the house. Neatly, Severus stepped out of the way, watching Lily blast them.

“No means no!” Lily shouted, aiming the blast at Potter’s head. “I don’t want to go out with you! You’ve lost your chance with me!”

“So I had a chance!” Potter seized the moment. Enraged, Lily screamed wordlessly, hosing him back down. Potter attempted to walk closer but slipped on the slick pavement.

“I could kick his head, if you like,” Severus offered.

“No thanks, Sev, this’ll do.”

Sputtering, Potter peeled himself off the pavement. “Lily, come on, I’ve been trying to get through to you all break---”

Lily pointed the hose straight at him. Delighted, Severus watched them run down the street, presumably to catch the Knight Bus.

Lily leaned against Severus, putting her head on his shoulder. Severus started, surprised. She curled around his arm. “God, Sev, this shit is freaking me out.”

He put his arm around her, rubbed her back. She wasn’t wearing a bra. He wished he hadn’t noticed that. “It’s okay, Lils.” He wasn’t very good at reassuring people. He prided himself on doing the opposite, actually. Normally he delegated his homesick firsties to Pomona. Severus forced himself to relax and held her closer. “Let’s go back inside. I’ll make you tea.”

At Hogwarts, Severus had tea with Filius and Bathsheba every Saturday morning, drinking tieguanyin, a good muzha over the more flowery flavors. Here in the Evans household, he dealt with PG Tips. They sat at the kitchen table, each cradling their cup. They hadn’t had a proper conversation since the night on the porch.

“Where were you last night?” Lily finally asked.

He couldn’t lie to her. “I was at the pub. Then I...went home with someone.” He studied his tea: black, no sugar. He couldn’t remember how Filius had introduced him to fine tea, he didn’t know how to make it happen again. “I may need your advice.”

“Oh?” There was a tremulous note in her voice. Severus did not look up.

“Yes.” Finally, he raised her eyes. Lily was gripping her tea, lips pressed into a thin line---Minerva’s influence. “You’re upset.”

Lily made an aborted gesture, then her hand spasmed onto the table. “It...nevermind. Can we talk about Potter?”

Severus sat back in his chair. “That’s all we ever do,” he said, and instantly regretted it.

Lily was evidently picking her battles. “He’s been by at least three times a week for the past two months. He’s stalking me, Sev. He’s got this idea in his head that we’re soulmates and he won’t stop bothering me. I’m getting scared. What if he keeps doing this at Hogwarts? I can’t avoid him, we’re in the same House, we take the same classes.”

Gently, Severus took Lily’s hand in his. Intent, she looked at him. He squeezed her hand, and felt fear, shame, embarrassment, vulnerability, love. He took her hand in both of his. They were so small, compared to his, already graphite smudges on her right pointer finger’s knuckle, for blending. “Have you thought about writing Mi, Professor McGonagall?”

Lily looked away. He traced an old scar on her hand with his thumb. She had cut her hand leaping from a tree, scrabbling back at the lower branches, when they were nine and trying to learn how to fly. “He’s her favorite.”

“I assure you she will take this seriously. Sexual harassment is a serious crime.”

“They didn’t take what happened to you at the Lake seriously.”

“I’m a man. And a greasy halfblood Slytherin, with no fortune to make him palatable. Potter’s...bullying, with regards to me, is character-building. But Professor McGonagall will understand that this is sexual harassment, Lily. You should write her.”

Lily twined her fingers between his. “You’re right. She’ll take care of this.” She forced a smile. “So you went home with someone last night?”

Severus groaned. “Promise me you won’t laugh.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“Promise me.”

“Well, sure, Sev, but what---”

“She’s our next Defense instructor,” he said wretchedly, “she mentioned it this morning. I thought she was much younger, nineteen or so, but she’s really in her mid-twenties….”

Lily put her head on the table. He flicked at her hair. She looked up and helpless, began to giggle. “How did you manage---Sev, this wasn’t your first time, was it? Merlin….”

He had lost his virginity without fanfare to a girl named Florence in his sixth year, sometime in February. She had been his Potions partner after he and Lily had stopped speaking. It had been nice. She had a lot of issues. So did he. They coped together, not particularly well, but it had been alright.

Lily cleared her throat. “Does she know you’re a student?” she asked.

“I think she assumed I was her age.” He met Lily’s eyes and was hit in the stomach with rage. Alarmed, he dropped her hand. “I regret it.”

Lily snorted. “That’s what a girl wants to hear. So what? What are you going to do?”

Severus was silent. He took a sip of tea. Surely she was not jealous. “I do not know. But it seems unfair for her to walk into a classroom and see me there, without warning.”

“It’s the beard,” Lily said. “Makes you look more mature.”

“What?”

She slouched in her chair. “You’ve changed, Severus. You act---more like an adult. Since the Lake, you’ve been a bit unstable in your moods, but you’ve been projecting much more...gravity. Your posture’s amazing.”

“I’m afraid I’m not following.”

“It doesn’t matter. Thanks for the tea. I’m going to go back to bed.”

She did indeed go back to bed, but woke up at around ten to have an argument with her mother, who wanted her to visit the neighbors with her. Lily’s stubborn refusal to leave her room, however, won out, and Mrs. Evans fluttered out of the house, ready to complain to her circle about her unruly daughter. She blasted Townes Van Zandt for a good two hours, rendering Severus incapable of focusing on his book. When she switched records to Queen, Severus lost his patience. He knocked on her door, shouting above the music, “Lily, please, turn the damn music down!” He had not missed communal living.

Lily opened the door. “You’re blocking my artistic outflow,” she deadpanned. “But it wasn’t go well anyway. Wanna see a movie? There’s that sci-fi flick with Bowie. Tuney saw it last week, she said it’s about succumbing to ones vices and that it reminded her of you.”

Severus grimaced. “So she’s as pleasant as always?”

“Don’t start.”

They went and saw The Man Who Fell to Earth. Severus had read the novel, but was indifferent to Bowie. The movie had shaken them both, and they were quiet on the train back to Cokeworth. They returned to her room, listening to some records. Lily replayed Townes Van Zandt,“If I Needed You.” Listening to the lyrics, Severus had to ask himself if he should be ashamed that it was so easy, so comforting, to put his arm around her, to take her hand: “Well, if I needed you, would you come to me?/Would you come to me and ease my pain?/If you needed me, I would come to you/I'd swim the seas for to ease your pain.”


	8. Truth Will Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We’re now at ten reviews per chapter at fanfiction.net, and a lovely amount of kudos for yall here on ao3. Thanks, guy! I really appreciate your kind words, and I will respond, I promise, it's just been a very emotionally trying (well, life) couple of weeks. I really appreciate it. It’s bolstering my confidence as a writer, certainly. And it’s been a rough few weeks, and it makes me glad to know I do something nice for others. Thanks for reading, I hope you’ll continue to enjoy it!  
> Taking apart another trope here: Severus tells the truth. I’ve been dwelling more and more, as I outline this story, more on what happens after Hogwarts, and so I want to hurry up and get there. I want to get through sixth years in three chapters, which will all probably be 6k+ words. Hopefully, we can cover seventh year in 10,000 words, and then move onto the rest of his life. I’m going to give you guys a spoiler, to get yall wondering how the plot will twist and turn: the story ends through the Veil, in canon-universe!Harry’s perspective. There are going to be three major arcs, and I’m eager to get started on the second and third parts.  
> Remember, this is a deconstruction fic. I’m going to throw as many tropes as I can think of and take them apart. If you have a favorite (or least favorite) you’d like to see, let me know!And please, review! I welcome constructive criticism! And reviews will help me write. It’s going to be a difficult couple of months.  
> Again, no OCs--characters all taken and fleshed out from the Harry Potter Wiki, though some details are changed.  
> Let me know if my Snape is too mature! If you want more conversation, I’m on Tumblr as lazarusquince.  
> Snape's sexuality is going to figure more in the second part. I hope I've made it clear in previous chapters, but to reiterate--he's dealing with a lot of internalized homophobia, and the entire point of this fic is to lovingly give him closure. He will overcome it. I definitely view him as queer. I think he's canonically asexual and pan, but afraid of exploring his sexuality. He doesn't like himself enough to let himself be comfortable. But the next chapter will feature long conversations about his sexuality, as well as the plot finally goddamn moving. I would've posted it all in one go, but the DADA scene just won't end, and I know his meeting with Dumbledore is going to be a couple thousand words long. But I swear on all that I hold sacred I will not queerbait, and I will not commit bisexual/pansexual erasure. 
> 
> Disclaimer: I don’t own anything but my words. The idea of how sexed up the Slytherin boys’ dormitory is comes from potionpen/Nightfall Rising’s fic About the Swot and The Wicket Gate, which I recommend checking out.
> 
> Content Warning: Racism, internalized homophobia, bullying and sexual harassment, and Mulciber. We’re earning our M rating in dark magic gore; no more sex, not until Severus agrees everyone’s in the same age bracket. And that will all be in the next chapter, because damn, the end of this first week does not want to be written.

Severus did go by the pub a couple more times after work, surprising himself by enjoying the company of his newfound friends. Their names came out: Broderick Bode, whom Avery had murdered via plant a couple months prior in his own timeline; Dorcas Meadowes, whom Voldemort had murdered personally for taking out almost all of his old guard of Walpurgis Knights; the bastard-born Atticus Flint, who tried very hard to do nothing for a living; and, of course, Emmeline Vance, who wasn’t so close to the others. They were all in their mid to late twenties. Emmeline seemed happy to be distant, flirting rather unsuccessfully with Dorrie, who thought her politics were not aggressive enough.

The revelation of his physical age came over them slowly; they first placed him as getting on his feet, barely twenty, as Brod lectured him about the lack of opportunity for advancement in Khalil’s shop for a clever bloke like him. Severus told him he was more interested in Brod’s job than working in an apothecary, which made Brod look askance.

“What are your NEWTs, then?” he asked, leaning on the table.

Severus’ face remained impassive. He did not glance at Emmeline. “I’ve done my Potions.”

“Nothing else?”

“Not yet.”

Emmeline stiffened. “You’re not---”

“I mistook your age,” Severus said blandly. “As it appears you mistook mine.” He took a long draw from his beer. Atticus let loose a giggle. Dorcas took him to the bar, where Severus was sure he was giggling more obviously. He hated everything.

“Well,” Brod said awkwardly. “I had O’s in Arithmancy, Ancient Runes, Divination, and Astronomy, which certainly helped. Are you interested more in alchemy? Get Slughorn to drop me a line, and we can arrange something---I’m certain Emmy could help.”

Emmy put her head in her hands. Severus changed the subject. No more was said on the subject, but Brod agreed to inquire about internships. “It’d be great to work with you, Severus,” he said. “I like the way your mind works, and we could use more Slytherins on our side.” Severus stiffened: whose? The right one, this time around. He was beginning to feel like he was in some alternate universe.

 

The night before they were due back at Hogwarts, Severus awoke to the creak of the door to his bedroom slowly being opened. Carefully, he wrapped his fingers around his wand, kept at his side, and waited for the intruder to reveal themselves. The door closed behind them. Severus cracked open an eye.

“Severus, wake up,” Lily’s voice commanded. He sat up in bed, still holding his wand. “There are a few things we need to talk through, before we return to school.”

He looked askance. “It’s still hours until dawn.”

Lily sat on the bed. “When were you going to tell me you travelled back in time?”

Severus’ heart stopped. Then a little-accustomed grin broke across his face: oh, that was the brilliant Lily Evans he remembered, the young woman for whom he had thrown his life away to atone, for whom to live something great. She had been commenting on his behavior lately, she had been watching him so intently---his brilliant girl had put together an entire investigation. This was why he adored her, why he kept her on a pedestal of mental agility and magical curiosity, no matter how unhealthy Dumbledore thought it. He put down his wand. “How long have you known?”

“Well, you told me yourself, didn’t you,” Lily said. “After the Lake. But I wasn’t sure until you went and hooked up with our future teacher. The Severus I remember would never have the balls do that. Casual sex?” Lily scoffed. “You’re far too intense for that.”

Severus was quite sure he did, in fact, have the balls to do it. He had tested them almost a month prior and found them only slightly premature. Lily was right, though, in finding the idea of him engaging in casual sex likely, at any age. He had slept with Emmy as a way to remind himself of his agency, his maturity, and while it had been nice it was now making his life more difficult. He avoided answering questions about his sexual habits though---Lily might be perspicacious, but she was still sixteen. “So you think it’s time travel, then,” he said. “My working theory is that I’ve been trapped on some other plane by a dark artifact in the Department of Mysteries.”

Lily shrugged. “You were so sure you were hallucinating me. I thought at first, you were just being an ass about me visiting you, after we’d fought about Remus...so you’re thirty-six?”

Severus regarded her fondly. “Have I told you how brilliant you are? You’re too brilliant to be a hallucination. I would never dream this.” He gestured around the room.

“Well, this is Petunia’s bed,” Lily deadpanned. “It is rather unlikely.” She reached over and pulled the light on the nightstand on. “Also you wouldn’t kiss me the night on the porch. Very prudent.”

An awkward silence fell upon them. Severus shifted away from her on the bed, looked at the shadows of the tree outside playing against the wall, studied the ceiling, regarded the rug. It was a nice rug, a circular blue faux-Persian, not gaudy. Petunia had good taste. “You are certainly a Gryffindor,” he said lamely.

Lily was smiling sadly. “The Severus I knew would be spluttering, red-faced, falling out of the bed and crawling out his skin, to get away from this conversation. Am I dead, in your future, then?”

“My working theory is that I’ve been pulled into an alternate reality. I also might be dead, and this could be purgatory.”

“You’re avoiding the question.” She took his hand. Severus closed his eyes, shook his head.

“I have had twenty years more than you,” he said hoarsely. “Please, this is enough of a nightmare.”

Lily moved closer. “So I died, then.”

“In 1981. Halloween. The Dark Lord...there was a prophecy. I told him. A child was to be born, that could defeat Him---I didn’t know you were pregnant.”

Lily chewed her lip. “There’s a lot to unpack there.”

“I’ve spent my life protecting your child, I’ve given up my career, I’ve been spying for Dumbledore---and I will continue to, no matter how curious a diversion this is. I need to return. Dumbledore needs me. I am his eyes and ears in the Dark Lord’s inner circle. They will lose the war without me.”

“I’m still trying to unpack, here. Stop defending yourself.”

“Mea culpa.”

“Maxima of culpas.”

“Culparum, remember your declensions.”

“I die at 21, then. Married to Potter and already with a kid? It all sounds...unlikely.”

“I assure you, that is the course fate took in my universe.”

“Pretty sad fate.”

“It is.” He remembered the bleak morning after, announcing dead-eyed to the assembled Slytherins in their common room, that the Dark Lord was dead. The students had been so cowed, unsure of how to react. Civil war had torn their country apart, and its divisions were never so apparent than in the fear and silence of Slytherin House. Leaving the dungeon had been agony, as students and faculty alike rejoiced. Lily Potter was dead, her husband too, and all that remained of her legacy was a baby. He had finally retreated to the library, knowing most of the castle would be out in the great hall, general jubilation. Sunlight lacing its way through the latticed windows of the library, dust dancing on the shelves: what had happened to her artistry? Every bit of beauty, he thought of her and her eyes, how they could never see again, and he wanted to die.

“What was the prophecy?”

“That a baby born at the end of July would bring about His fall. Albus told me your death triggered some old sacrificial soul magic, obliterating the Dark Lord.”

“Albus?”

Self conscious, Severus ducked behind his hair. “The Headmaster. Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts School, Head of the Order of the Phoenix. Amongst other august titles. Who else? I work for him. I have since I was nineteen, as Potions instructor and then Head of Slytherin House.”

Lily started to giggle. She put her head against his bony shoulder. “I don’t know what’s the most unbelievable, that I successfully deduced you’re a time travel, that you’re on a first name terms with Dumbledore, or that you ended up a bloody teacher. Sev, who in their right mind would put you in charge of a classroom?”

“I assure you I did not beg for the job,” Severus bit acerbically, “but Dumbledore seemed to think I would be most useful in service to the school, rather letting me loose as a spy and researcher. He feared it would...tempt me.” His lips curled into a sneer. Lily was quiet on his shoulder. “You’re not...disturbed by the liberties I have taken with your household?”

“That future--your future, your present--it can’t happen now, can it?” Lily muttered. “Which supports the notion of this now being an alternate universe. Unless it always was, depending on your view of fate---”

“Generally dismal,” Severus explained.

“I noticed, and if there’s a prophecy---when was the prophecy made?”

“Early 1979.”

“It hasn’t been made yet, which means it isn’t restricting my life yet, and if I don’t fall pregnant--and I have no intention to, what was I thinking? Why didn’t I get an abortion?”

“It’s illegal in the Wizarding world.”

“Not in the muggle,” Lily countered, pulling away from him. “It doesn’t make sense, not unless Potter didn’t want me too--I married Potter? Willingly?”

 

“I was assured the wedding was beautiful,” Severus said.

“Of course it would be, I was in it.” Lily tossed her hair back. The low lamp light caught itself in her magnificent mane; her hair shimmered. 

Severus, conscious that Lily was the most accidentally magical person he had ever met, deadpanned,“Your vanity is astounding.” And all the more charming, for not understanding its power.

Lily grew serious. “So what are we going to do?”

Severus’ brow furrowed. “I am going to research the artifact that trapped me--an archway in the Department of Mysteries--and contact this world’s Dumbledore and offer him my services in the upcoming war. While I am eager to return to my plane, it seems...dishonorable not to use the information I have been given. I do not know what you would like to do. You are free to make your own path. I have little desire to disarray your life more than I already have.”

Lily blinked. “Well, I wouldn’t say you’ve disarrayed my life. You gave me more information to make decisions with. Helped me understand the context in which Potter---Severus, you said war?”

They talked long into the night, eventually moving downstairs for a cup of tea when they heard her parents shifting in their bedroom. Severus told her about the fear that had seized their country, which would grow to choke them in the upcoming years, about how Slytherin stultified, debate was lost and everyone with a capable wand was pressed into the Dark Lord’s service, or else they would find the job market abruptly narrowed, their families harassed, odd things from their homes moved and lost. He explained their falling-out, where the moment deviated. He told her about her son, a total brat, just like his father, but abused by Petunia, as reckless as Potter at his worst and as self-righteous as she could be, and what he did to secure his life. Sneering, he told her about Sirius Black, the return of the Dark Lord, the game of whispers and intimidation he played while spying, the torture he faced in giving a fudged report. He grew heated about the Fudge administration. He almost despaired at the state of his house, and what redemption could be had for them.

“And you’re going to Dumbledore?” Lily pressed.

“Of course.”

Lily was amused. “Twenty years does a lot of damage. You’re Dumbledore’s man through and through, now, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Severus said, surprised she had to ask, almost offended. “Always.”

 

Mrs. Evans kept up a running commentary on the long, weary drive from the northmost of Britain down to London. It always made Lily furious that they had to scrounge a way to get down to London, only to go north again. Severus always found the five hours out of the muggle world and back into the wizarding helpful for transitioning his mindset and prepping his shields. Lily’s griping and Severus’ meditation, however, was continuously interrupted.

“Look at that boy’s motorcycle, it’s awful,” Mrs. Evan complained. “Taking up space on the road, threatening public safety! It’s a disgrace. There ought to be laws about this. The media spends so much time on those miners’ strike, but what about these--these punks? Roaring around without a care for---”

Lily turned to Severus, despairing. Severus looked at her flatly. “It could be worse,” he murmured. “Petunia may have wanted to see you off.”

“Kill me.”

“That would certainly be a plot twist.”

Lily leaned forward. “Hey Dad, can you put the radio on? How about some music?”

The Sex Pistols immediately came blasting on: “I want to destroy the passer-by!” Severus visibly cheered up. He wondered if he could use the excuse of his teenaged body to head bang.

“TURN IT OFF!” Mrs. Evans screeched.

“Mother,” Lily began exasperatedly, “you do realize there is music beyond Beatlemania? The world is changing around us and you can’t expect it to conform to your own tastes. I like this. Severus likes this. Just let us enjoy it.”

Mrs. Evans sniffed. “And I’m your mother and sitting in the front seat, closer to the radio, so don’t I get to decide what we play?”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Lily accused.

Mr. Evans’ hands tightened on the steering wheel. Severus met his eyes through the rearview window and carefully looked away. There were four more hours ‘til London. It was going to be a long trip.

The Evanses did not walk them to the platform, but made their goodbyes outside of the station. Lily was nervous about Potter possibly seeing them. Mrs. Evans made the usual nagging commands: “Write every week,” which Severus knew Lily would never do, “Don’t eat too much,” which only served to make Lily more determined to gorge herself at the feast, “Try and bring back a nice boy,” and her mother actually glared at Severus, who merely gazed back, lips curled into an approximation of an Archaic smile. Lily would be looking to pick a fight, and he didn’t want to give her fodder by being rude to her parents. Mr. Evans patted his daughter on the back, who looked at him like a wounded doe, and shook Severus’ hand firmly.

“Do come and stay with us this Christmas,” he said mildly, and ushered Mrs. Evans to the car. He had always wanted a son. Lily bit her lip.

“Let’s try and meet after the feast tonight?” she offered.

“If I remember correctly, Rosier will wax sanctimonious until midnight,” Severus demurred. “And I do need to speak to Horace--to Slughorn--to arrange a meeting with the Headmaster.”

Lily’s face twisted. “Tomorrow morning then, before breakfast. At the Lake, usual place?”

“The boathouse,” Severus said. He had avoided that tree religiously, since he had called her a mudblood, and he did not want to risk a reassertion of fate. “Send me a Patronus if Potter bothers you and I’ll meet you outside your common room. But you ought to talk to Minerva as soon as you’re finished with your first-years. Let me know what she says.”

Lily studied his face. His lips thinned under her eyes, uncomfortable. “You are ever so mature, aren’t you? I’ll see you at the boathouse. Seven o’clock?” She squeezed his hand quickly, and darted away. He counted two minutes, knowing if he came in close enough to be associate they would both be harassed. He was displeased at the meeting time she had set. He had always been an insomniac, and normally found the first few hours of dawn the most restful. Normally he would pace the corridors until he felt himself quiescent enough to fall asleep; in Cokeworth, he read, and began running as he grew older and formidable enough to take on muggers. He needed to return home.

The platform was bustling. Head high, he coolly surveyed the crowd: outpourings of sanctimony, as over-zealous friends loudly reaffirmed their attachments, so threatened by the absence of three months. Evan Rosier was rapidly reassuring his mother and younger sister in French; it was disturbing to see a woman, but for her own blood prejudices, he thought he would marry as an eleven year old. Wilkes and Mulciber were snickering over blinking muggleborns’ confusion. He quickened his pace, face still neutral. Then Lupin walked right into his path.

His instincts screamed for him to throw the wolf into the tracks. Luckily, he had been obsessively working on his Occlumency that summer; now that was an argument for a more integrated self, since his self-control had shattered as his brain changed, thus implying that he was more than his soul, but a body as well...which might explain why he was so weak to sleep with Emmeline, he had thought he was reasserting his maturity but he might have been following his phallus, like any other adolescent.

“What,” he sneered, “do you want, Lupin?”

“Oh, sorry, Snape,” he said nervously. The Remus Lupin of 1977 was well-dressed; his father’s fortune still allowed him to buy off the new rack at Madam Malkin’s. Severus had always been amused how their fortunes had reversed; he, the desperately poor halfblood, had achieved financial stability, while his weak little bully of a wealthy purebred werewolf lost his fortune through his famous father’s madness. Severus decided to copy a countenance and raised his head slightly, hooding his eyes and looking down at Lupin from his very long nose. He kept his lips in a sneer. He had learned this look from Bellatrix. It had its desired effect. Lupin stepped back, alarmed.

“Uh,” the wolf said, “I was wondering--I wanted to apologize for my friends bothering you so much over the summer, I asked them to stop but there was no reasoning with them---”

Severus swept away. He hated Lupin the most out of that entire lot. Potter was a horrible vacuous waste of privilege, but was at least capable of impressive magic and regret, though he would never try for atonement. Black was a sociopath and needed to be exterminated. Lupin, though, Lupin was a coward where even Pettigrew was brave, in standing up for one’s dignity, for one’s sense of self and self-worth. Lupin had no identity but pleasing words and hidden barbs, amber eyes that glowed a hungry red when no one useful to him was around. Potter and Black, for all their horrendous character flaws, did not give a damn what other people thought. Lupin had no sense of personal morality; he just borrowed other people’s empty words.

He spent the train ride hiding in the luggage compartment, avoiding everyone, partly because he didn’t like people, but also because he did not feel like wrangling Potter, Black, Avery, Mulciber, Wilkes’ wandering hands, and all. He knew Lily would be fine on her own, and besides they had spent the summer carefully building boundaries. He read, he waited, and he savored the last few moments before the storm.

 

Severus ended up pressed into a carriage full of cool colors: Benjy Fenwick, Ravenclaw extraordinaire, whom Regulus had killed; Regulus Black, who was trying to avoid Mulciber, like everyone with a sense of self-worth; Latisha Randle, an occasional Ravenclaw study partner of Lily’s, who tried to awkwardly apologize for doing nothing at the Lake; and Yatin Bhagat, a seventh year Slytherin, who occasionally joined Severus in the lab. Severus hadn’t thought of him in years. They chatted; Severus listened with half an ear. When the castle came into view, glittering in the dark, reverence felled them silent.

Hogwarts: an old Iron Age settlement, added upon, built up, pirouetted onto the lake and onto the sky, how he not forgive the thrill in his stomach whenever he saw it cut against a black night, windows alit twinkling like the stars behind them? He had fallen in love with this castle as a scrap of eleven, dirty and tired and terrified, a millrat from a smoggy Muggle town, and the castle had taken him in, the grounds had hid him. How many times had he found a convenient nook or passageway when when Potter and his gang were chasing him? How many times had he come upon a painting so peaceful that it struck his rage dumb? Hogwarts hid Turners and turns, twisting for those caught so delicately in its web. Prowling these hall, he knew the castle was his, as much as it were Dumbledore’s, as much as it were Filch’s. His heart beat heavy, painfully in his chest: there was his home, across the vale.

The feast went by quickly. Potter and his gang hissed whenever a Slytherin sortee was announced, so Rosier got up and started applauding when the snakelet would make their way to the table. The prefects got the hint and soon enough all prefects were standing for their respective house, to welcome a sortee in. Severus respected how well Rosier handled the house, and however deadly the consequences, he respected how easily he began recruitment for the Death Eaters.

He caught Emmeline’s eye after she was introduced and gave her a half-smirk. She grimaced back at him. They would have to talk further, on how to handle their situation; beyond that one instance of casual sex, they had been seeing each other socially, as equals, and Severus thought it right to reassure her he would respect her primacy in the classroom. Piling the usual glorious steaming heaps of spiced vegetables and curried meats, he turned to his food and began to eat. His yearmates had learned not to bother him too much the first few days of term; he had always been jumpy. He was counting on them to prioritize public face over answers; doubtless Lucius had let everyone know that he, his protege, had already sat his Potions NEWT. Chatter filled the hall, expanding to the ceiling. Severus called on his occlumency, flattened the scene. The pressure lessened. The night wore on.

Rosier, as Severus predicted, waxed sanctimonious for almost a full hour, despite Renato Zabini being senior prefect. He slipped back into the dormitory and composed a quick note to Professor Slughorn, asking to meet; he thought he may as well request to take his Defense, Herbology, and Arithmacy NEWTs early, since those were the areas of knowledge he had practically mastered by now. Sitting through class would be boring; working through class with Potter would be hell. He needed a way out, and he could use this as a chance to speak with Albus. He needed to return home.

A shadow fell across his desk. Severus slowly glanced over his shoulder, face dismissive. It was Wilkes. He put his hand on his shoulder. Twenty years ago, he would have leaned into it, lightly kissed the fingers. Instead, he stiffened. He was just a sixteen year old boy.

“You never wrote me back,” Wilkes said hoarsely.

Severus turned back to his desk and quickly signed the note. He passed his hand over the ink, casting a wordless and wandless drying charm. “I was busy.”

Wilkes’ fingers travelled across his neck. “Even for me? Let’s try your muffling charm out, Evan’s still going on.” His voice was half-melancholy, half-fond, and his hand smoothed its way to Severus’ chest.

Severus went very still. Suddenly he jolted up. “I have to go,” he said, grabbing the note and slipping it into his robe pocket, “I need to speak to Slughorn.”

Wilkes grabbed his arm. “Snape, come on. The muggles haven’t tried to beat the gay out of you, have they?” His tone was half-joking.

“I’m not gay.” As far as he was concerned, he had no sexuality until he got back home.

“I sucked you off,” Wilkes pointed out.

Severus shrugged. “And it was a pleasurable enough occurrence, but one I would rather not repeat---” Unless he were Sturgis, and back in his rightful universe.

“Three times.” Wilkes’ eyes narrowed. He crossed his arms. “You liked it. You told me you liked it. You asked for more.”

“Well,” Severus hemmed. He had no idea Wilkes would be so emotional about a quick, childish sexual exploration---though, he supposed, at the time he might have fancied himself half in love. Certainly not fully. He didn’t like anyone well enough for that.

“Oh, I see.” Wilkes stepped closer. He jabbed his finger into his chest. Severus held his ground, staring down at him impassively. “It’s the mudblood, isn’t it?”

“Do not use that word.”

“Why? Mudbloods like her call me pansy and poof and queen, why can’t I call her names back? Did she let you touch her breasts? Wiggle around in that cold fish she calls a vagina? Is that why? Is it?”

Severus scowled. “You’re getting hysterical, I don’t--Wilkes, I am not interested in engaging in sex, with man or women or---centaur, while I am at Hogwarts. I’ve got work to do. And certainly not with a fish.”

“Oh, fuck you, Snape.” Wilkes stormed back into his bed.

Rosier popped in cheerily. “Did I miss anything?”

Wilkes made a long, whining sound. Severus flushed slightly. Regardless of their relationship, Severus had always been painfully aware that Wilkes had been fully in love with Rosier.

He held up the note. “Got to slip this to Slughorn,” he said tersely, and slipped away. He stuck it under Horace’s office door, knowing the man was busy writing letters to the new snakelets’ parents, and went back to the dorm. Wilkes had pushed his bed next to Avery’s. The curtains were drawn, though the bed was rustling, and an odd buzzing sound filled the room.

Severus exchanged a knowing glance with Rosier. “Thank Merlin for your Muffliato charm,” Rosier grinned.

He sat on his bed and took off his shoes. “Where’s Mulciber?”

“Girls’ dorm.”

“Ah.” 

Nothing more needed to be said, though the professor in him was worried if the girls knew that Mulciber was in there with them. He rooted around in his bag for a Dreamless Sleep potion, measured for exactly six hours, reset the wards on his bag, shoes, and bed, and downed it. He promptly fell asleep, still in his robes, to Rosier’s snort and the muffled moans and sighs from Avery and Wilkes’ little section, as the caster climaxed and broke the spell.

 

He woke up hard, which surprised him, and then he remembered he was sixteen again. Grimacing, he got up and hurried off to the showers, taking of business quickly. When he got out, he cast a quick laundering charm on his robes and checked himself in the mirror. The beard still surprised him. Maybe he would keep it, when he got back home---but facial hair would be a disaster in the Potions classroom, he could never understand how Slughorn could stand it. He ran a quick comb through his hair. Frowning, he headed back to the dorm and checked the time. It was about 6:45 in the Scottish morning. He fetched an elastic from his bag and quickly pulled his hair back. He did not want to be associated with young Severus Snape, especially if he managed to meet with the Headmaster.

His dormmates snored around him. Mulciber was not in the room, presumably still with the girls. Avery and Wilkes’ beds were still pushed together. Twenty years ago, Wilkes’ playboy tendencies would have had him fuming, ashamed, and feeling used. Now he was only dimly amused. He straightened his robes, the thin tunic and heavier academic gown, which he buttoned and belted tightly, and put on the cheap deerskin leggings Wilkes had given him a winter ago, twenty-one years ago. Booted, belted, buttoned, he was satisfied. He hadn’t belted his robes in years, but did not want to run the risk of another Levicorpus spell.

The common room was empty, sun filtering through the lake to softly fill the room with a muted gray light. The floor was still stone--he had had it changed to carpeting in 1983--but the furniture remained well loved, and well taken care of. Plush couches, a few ottomans, a winged armchair or two: everything looked inviting, but elegant. Slytherins, no matter their privilege, learned not to take common furniture lightly. The halls in the dungeons were similarly quiet, the cold dawn illuminating the corridors from the translucent barriers to the Lake. He took a shortcut through Dungeon 2B, where a winding staircase hid in a dusty chest of drawers, up to the boathouse. His footsteps echoed, but Severus was confident no one would question the noise. He had always been a prowler.

The rickety staircase creaked under his weight, but still took him up into the boathouse, water lapping onto the cold flagstone floor. Lily was already sitting there, biting her lip, an open book in her hands, feet playing on the water.

“What are you reading?” he settled crosslegged, next to her.

She closed the book and tucked it into her bag. “Max Weber. His essay on the types of legitimate rule. I’ve been thinking about the Knights of Walpurgis, or whatever they call themselves now.”

“Did you speak with Minerva?”

Lily glanced at him, askance. “It’s unsettling when you use her first name,” she muttered. “But yeah. She told me she’d have Potter and Black in her office, and that they’re not to bother me or else she’ll call the MLE. At least neither of them are in Potions.”

Severus blinked. “What are your classes?” He had long forgotten.

“Charms, Potions, Arithmancy, Astronomy, Herbology, Transfiguration, and DADA. My back-up plan is the apothecary, but you know I’m planning on going to art school. Hadn’t I--”

“No,” Severus said, fighting a sudden lump in his throat. “You didn’t. You were pregnant by 19. I have no idea what you did, with your one year out of Hogwarts.”

Lily sighed. “I hate the sound of your future.”

“Much of it is my own doing.”

“Living it seems like hell enough.”

“It bears a passing resemblance to purgatory.”

“Well, I died. So I supposed it ended in heaven for me.” She looked up at him, a smile creeping across her face.

Severus smirked. “You assume your own goodness.”

“I am a nice person,” Lily deadpanned.

“Nice isn’t good.”

They joked a bit more, Severus disclosing his plan: to arrange a meeting with the Headmaster by asking to sit more NEWTS early. He would tell the Headmaster what he knew of his future and then, in return, be granted a pass into the Death Room of the Department of Mysteries. He would send his Patronus through, to contact the Albus of his world, and if Albus could send his own spirit phoenix through, Severus would march straight back to business.

“But what’ll happen to the you of this world?” Lily asked. “Would he be left in the Death Room? Would he remember what you’ve done? Does he even exist? Is he alive? Has--that ‘dark magic artifact,’ the Veil--could it have killed him?”

That was an unsettling thought. He thought of his incoherent, wrathful, desperate teenaged self, reeling about in 1996, and then had to admit to himself that there was not much of a difference, but for the slow simmer of his classroom persona. He had always been a right berk.

Lily’s hair was in her face. He couldn’t see her eyes. Mindlessly, he smoothed her hair away. She leaned into the touch.

“He is dead, then, probably.” Lily’s voice was flat. “Overwritten. Can I grieve for a boy already lost? He was going to leave me anyway.” She pulled his hand away. “And you’ll go, too.”

Severus hesitated.

“You have to.” Lily pushed herself up. Taking her hand, Severus stood. Her eyes were deep and sad, her lips curled into a smile, and he felt the irrational desire to hold her to him, never to let her go, to follow her to the ends of the earth, however far she would have him. Lily stroked his face and hugged him again. “I don’t know how to react to any of this,” she murmured, “I don’t know what to do, I don’t know if I’ll even live to see--my first damn art show. But I’m glad that I have you. For now.”

Awkwardly, Severus patted her back. “Always.”


	9. How Many Miles to Babylon?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, still trying to stick to schedule. Here we have Lily finally processing how much her life has changed, and Severus planning about to get back through the Veil--though it’s a bit more complicated that he had hoped. I really wish I could tell yall everything that’s going to happen, but alas, I don’t want to spoil. But this story, for better or worse, is only reaching the halfway point of the first part. After this chapter, the character study and emotional drama takes a backseat and the action and adventure begins.
> 
> The moment with the gargoyle is probably unrealistic, but Harry Potter is all about the wonder of magic, so I couldn’t help but run away with it.
> 
> Disclaimer: Some of the inspiration for 1996!Dumbledore and Severus’ relationship comes from plutoplex’s fic, “Unrequited.” I heartily recommend reading it. Diana Wynne Jones and Neil Gaiman came up with the idea of using “How Many Miles to Babylon?” as a spell. Lily is quoting Otis Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness.” If yall are curious about what’s going through her head, I recommend looking up the lyrics of the songs she sings through the story, and whatever writers or artists she references to Severus. The fact that she kept a diary is Cursed Child canon. There’s a brief allusion to Fullmental Alchemist, but no actual crossover. The Anglo-Saxon is taken from “The Wanderer,” which Lily shows Severus in this fic--and if you’re interested in finding out more, comment or PM me, I know a page with a literal translation and another one that marks how you’d put the words into English syntax.
> 
> Content Warning: Discussion of post traumatic stress disorder, sexual assault, abortion, marital rape, racism in the muggle world, gaslighting, dark magic gore, Mulciber. The discussion of assault begins with “You know what Mulciber did to Mary, right?” and ends with “I’ve been so inured to this, violence is part of the world I live in” if you’d like to skip it.
> 
> Please let me know if you find the way I frame Severus and Lily talking about his grandmother objectionable, and I’ll rewrite accordingly. There’s been a Yemeni community in South Shields, which is right next to where I set Cokeworth, since the 1890s, and have mentioned in earlier chapters. I do think JK Rowling codes Snape as very much like Emily Bronte codes Heathcliff: not white enough but passing, and suspicious and villainous because of that; “oddly” feminine in emotional outbursts, and more than a little queer. And I headcanon Lily being a great deal like Cathy, particularly in how and why she picks up James.   
>  The Shafiqs are one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight pureblood families, and I imagine Eileen’s mother being even more furious with her daughter, as she realizes her son-in-law not only hates magic, but so-called “foreigners” as well. It’s difficult to even want to stay in contact with a relative when that relative's partner forces them to disown you. (but we’ll address more of Severus, Eileen, and Tobias’ dynamics in about two chapters)  
> I recommend looking to ensnapingthesenses and cokeworthcauldrons on Tumblr for more informative discourse.  
> On my personal headcanon when it comes to Lily, and how it might inform this fic: I think, if Voldemort had gone after Neville, Lily and James would have divorced like so many other young marriages. Eventually, Lily and Severus might have reconnected, and they might have been able to resolve their bitterness and guilt, and make something healthy out of it. But do you think Heathcliff and Cathy would ever have been able to be happy together? But that’s regarding the canon universe, not this fic.  
> This is going to be a long fic, yall. There might be four more chapters to this section, but I have four longish stories planned for the second part, each probably around 15,000-20,000 words. I want to give these characters justice--I suppose I never got closure for the 1st Vold War. Enough sequels, I want a prequel in Snape’s point of view!

Classes were boring, but more unpleasant than teaching. He lingered after Herbology to speak to Pomona about taking the NEWT early, and as he had expected, Slughorn had already asked her at breakfast. She was puzzled but sympathetic, guessing at his reasons for wanting to hurry out of school.

“Of course I’ll send the Headmaster my recommendation, Mr. Snape,” she said. “I’d be happy to. But your mother? How does she feel about you hurrying through school? You’re her only child, correct? Has her health been good? She must miss you.”

Severus let her assume what she would. His Arithmancy professor, who would be killed six months from now by Goyle Senior, was similarly obliging. Slughorn sent him a note that he was to meet with Dumbledore early Friday morning, the other sixth years’ Potions slot, to discuss his plans.

He avoided Potter’s gang religiously, lurking in the Restricted Section and scouring the shelves for any example of soul magic and the afterlife he could find. He found an atlas of leylines that was almost entirely useless, though he redrew the map of the United Kingdom and Ireland, thinking it might be useful at some point. Two lines intersected in London, and perhaps the Veil drew its power from there. 

In Magick Moste Evile, he found a cross-reference to the founding of the Department of Mysteries, specifically the abuse of the Hall of Prophecy, and the examination of the souls of horcrux-makers in the pituitary gland in the Hall of Brains. But, Godelot continued, "Of the Horcrux, wickedest of magical inventions, we shall not speak nor give direction —" and Severus’ curiosity quickly became aroused. He had heard whispers of them, that they provided a Dark alternative to the Philosopher’s Stone, and knew one had been an ingredient in the Potion used to resurrect the Dark Lord, but had never quite understood them. The name literally meant ‘sacred’ in the Greek, they involved lobotomizing one’s magic, and the ritual required an obsidian knife and a Avada Kevada murder, it was one of the reasons why the curse was Unforgiveable--but he had never learned how to make one, or really what to do with one. Distracted, he looked through the usual dark texts, but could not find anything in the Hogwarts shelves. Perhaps the Malfoy library would have more information? He made a mental note to talk to Narcissa--the Black library then, Narcissa had brought her family’s books into the marriage, hadn’t she? And she might have more information on the Veil, she and Lucius had been drawn together by their mutual obsession with collecting rare Dark artifacts. He decided he would see if he could visit her, the first Hogsmeade weekend, he supposed. It was awful, being a child again.

On Thursday, he had Emmy’s class, though he supposed he should think of her as Professor Vance. They saw each other in the halls sometimes, and she, the picture of dignity, would nod solemnly as he raised an eyebrow back. He remembered the stately politician from the Order, and the regulated young professor from his own student days, and it was difficult to place the laughing, badly corseted witch in his categorization of her. He missed the intimacy they had had, lurking in the pub, the silliness of the sex--not that he wanted to repeat it, or even know her romantically. He was still frustrated over Sturgis, and over his body refusing to behave itself. He kept himself resolutely buttoned and belted, avoiding looking at himself naked in the mirror. Nothing looked quite right.

Of course Potter’s gang, sans that worthless excuse for snivelling life they called Wormy, was in the class, but so were Benjy Fenwick and Latisha Randle, the most tolerable of the Ravenclaws, and, as he had hoped, Lily. In the past he had dreaded sharing classes with her and Potter, but now he was relieved to use her as buffer against the rest of Hogwarts, of jumbled half-remembered faces, and particularly of the voices of the soon to be dead, those whom he had not learned to save. The other Slytherins had opted out of DADA, quietly practicing dark spells sent and explained by Lucius and Bella. Severus had already known most of those spells in the first time around; he had helped Lucius select them. He would be able to emphasize defensive, rather than offensive magic, this time, and was relieved.

Lily met him as he was walking towards the classroom. “Nervous?” she muttered.

“Why would I be?”

She smirked, and chose to sit next to him when they entered the classroom. Benjy and Latisha sat on her other side. Severus had the sense they were protecting her from Potter, but, surprisingly enough, Potter only quickly glanced their way, flushed, and slunk to the opposite side of the room as them, dragging a scowling Black and a droopy Lupin with him. He nudged Lily with his knee.

“McGonagall’s threat worked?” he asked in an undertone.

“He’s been keeping away since,” she whispered in his ear. He felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up, not in a displeasing way, and touched her leg reassuringly. Benjy Fenwick was looking at them strangely. He schooled his face into his usual neutral scowl and withdrew his hand. He and Lily had always been comfortable with each other’s bodies, perhaps too much so, even as they struggled through puberty. And they had, enraged, slept with each other, just the once, after his father’s funeral--and she disappeared from his life, she had married Potter, and she had died. He had regretted it, the entire scene. They had been so furious at each other, it was if the pleasure they ripped from each’s bodies would brand them more than any Cruciatus would. He really wished her last memory of him would have been of him desperately apologizing, not him accusing her of abandoning him and waving the Dark Mark in her face as she screamed that he was a traitor, a coward, couldn’t even own up to what he was, selling out his own kind, he would never leave this filthy town---

Emmy swept in, her hair caught in a snood. Severus smirked. Clearly her penchant for dramatic hair styles would not be restrained by her professional role. The sun, slotting through the high thin windows, caught the web that held her hair and shimmered like steel. Severus would bet she knew a way to use that snood in battle transfiguration.

“Good day, class!” Professor Vance called. “I am your current Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, on loan from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. I finished my auror training two years ago,” Snape accidentally caught her eye and they both quickly looked away, “and have worked in investigating dark magic and handling dark creatures--for example, the giant attacks in the Orkneys. I am looking forward to sharing what I know. Now, introductions? House and the reason why you’re taking this class to the NEWT?”

The usual inanity filled the classroom--Potter, Go Go Gryffindor and to rid the world of evil, and his lackeys agreed; Benjy Fenwick at least was curious how defense and the dark arts were defined, and was interested in healing magic; Latisha liked competitive duelling; Lily wanted to learn how to protect herself and those she cared about. She glanced at him, not Potter, and bit her lip. In another life, Severus would have flushed.

“And you, Mr. Snape?” Emmy smiled. “Our solitary Slytherin?”

“The Dark Arts," Severus said slowly, "are many, varied, ever-changing, and eternal. Fighting them is like fighting a many-headed monster, which, each time a neck is severed, sprouts a head even fiercer and cleverer than before. We are fighting that which is unfixed, mutating, indestructible." Potter was staring at him, fury fighting on his face. Black was curiously still. Lupin looked considering. Lily and Benjy were spellbound. Latisha, though, was doodling a large pair of breasts on a piece of scrap parchment. Five points from Ravenclaw for general distraction, but two points for body positivity--she had added a little bit of nipple hair. A little self-conscious, Severus continued, “Our defenses must therefore be as flexible and inventive as the arts we seek to undo. And I seek to unravel the...enigma of a dark curse, the fear on which the forbidden feeds and grows powerful, seductive--we must learn ever to adapt, to battle the magic of our worst selves.”

Emmeline was looking at him as if they were still in bed, satisfied with whatever intimacy he had rendered. “You ought to look into the Aurors’ Office, Mr. Snape,” she said. “Though the poetry should be culled from mission reports.”

Embarrassed, Severus ducked behind his hair. “A purely intellectual fascination,” he muttered, then stopped. He felt odd, a twisting in his stomach--uncertainty fluttered under his skin. Lily looked at him curiously. He shook his head at her. He would think this through later.

She set them doing nonverbal spells. Lily paired with him. Lazily, he wordlessly disarmed her. Lily scowled.

“That’s not fair,” she said. “You know why.”

“It may have escaped your notice, Evans,” he retorted, “but life’s not fair.”

“Try it wandless, then. And let me go.”

Another idea he filed away: training in wandless magic, since his research was necessarily limited by the Hogwarts collection--he really did need to write Narcissa. They continued practicing, Lily slowly increasing her concentration and allowing more force to rip his wand from his hand. After six tries, she got it. She had always been brilliant, so quick with her mind--something her erstwhile son had not inherited. Depression hit him so suddenly he almost dropped his wand: he’d be meeting with the Headmaster tomorrow, he’d be going home, he’d be leaving his brilliant friend behind and condemning himself to death yet again. But, he thought wretchedly, glancing at Benjy Fenwick, whose body had been mutilated by his Sectumsempra, it was not as if he merited a good life. Death was too good for him. He had sacrificed his chance at a good life, he had sacrificed Lily before, on the altar of his ambition. Leaving her behind again seemed the ultimate atonement.

“Mr. Snape, are you alright?”

Severus shook back to the present. Lily was glaring, disturbed, while Professor Vance waved a hand in front of his eyes. “Pardon?”

“You zoned out,” Lily said, exasperated. “I’ve been holding your wand for two minutes now.”

Emmeline peered into his eyes. Startled, Severus ducked behind his hair and backed up. She took a step closer. He took another step back. Surprised, she stopped. “Mr. Snape, I think you ought to go to the infirmary after class. That’s some...serious disassociation.”

“I’m fine,” Severus snarled, shooting a glare at Lily. “There’s no need for any such hysterics--a moment of disorientation, that is all, and besides I have been wordlessly disarming her for the fifteen minutes. Let us move on.”

Lily folded her arm. “Don’t you call me hysterical, you’re the one freaking out. Calm down.”

“I am calm,” Severus hissed.

Lily and Emmeline exchanged a glance. Emmeline cleared her throat. “Perhaps some magical exhaustion, then. And you ought to be grateful your friend called me over, instead of practicing more spells. Constant vigilance, Mr. Snape. You’d deserve any hexes you got, out of your mind like that.”

Severus scowled at her retreating back, and then turned his glare to Lily.

“What? Don’t look at me like that,” Lily snapped. “She’s right. I tried getting your attention, but I didn’t want Potter or Black to notice. You should be grateful.”

“I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself,” Severus said, “and it is inappropriate for you to take liberties--”

“Oh, listen to yourself!” Lily exclaimed, “I knew you were too pleasant over the summer. What’s crawled up your arse and died? Stop being such a child and calm the fuck down.”

Severus’ face twisted. “I am calm,” he ground out, and waving a hand he disarmed her. Both their wands came flying towards him. He caught them smoothly, and held Lily’s out to her. It was hot in his hand. He wondered if he could bend it to his will, and blanched. Lily was still glaring at him. “Or perhaps not,” he acknowledged.

Lily snatched her wand from him. “Expulso!”

He swiftly blocked it, sending it straight back to her.

“Protego!” she shouted. The spell bounced harmlessly off her shield. “Reducto!” Severus quickly dodged. Everyone in the class stopped. 

Latisha started to snicker. “Trouble in paradise?” she murmured, too loudly, not only to Benjy.

“Shh,” Benjy said, also audibly. “Don’t get involved.”

 

“Miss Evans!” Emmeline barked. “Twenty points from Gryffindor, and detention, to be served tonight, after dinner. Learn to master your temper before it masters you--dark magic feeds off your rage--”

 

“I do not practice dark magic,” Lily snarled. Severus took a step back. A wisp of steam was curling from the tip of her wand. Subtly, he checked for exits.

“Anything can become dark, if put to the wrong purposes, if given too much force,” Emmeline snapped back. “And, you, Mr. Snape, stop antagonizing your classmate. Petty pride does not become you.”

Severus flushed and stood up ramrod straight. He opened his mouth to say something cutting but the bell rang. The class hurriedly departed. Emmeline swept after them, but paused at the door. “I expected better from you, Severus,” she said coldly, and left them alone.

He rounded on Lily. “What the fuck was that for?”

Lily narrowed her eyes. “What the fuck was what for? Why’d you flip out on me? Hysterical?”

Severus sighed. “You’re overreacting.”

“You’re being an arsehole. I was trying to help you, you’ve been off the wall all summer--since,” she faltered, cleared her throat, and started again. “You’ve always been moody, but lately you’ve been...unpredictable. Like sobbing after that time with Potter. Picking a fight with your dad. Running out on me after we talked about Lupin. Shagging your Defense professor. You’ve been running hot and cold, one day you’re humming along to my music as you cook dinner, another you disappear until the wee hours of the night, silent and sullen--is this what you grew into? Are you really this immature?”

So sayeth the ranting teenager, Severus almost said, but caught the words on his tongue and swallowed them. What was wrong with him? His occlumency was unpredictable, his body was disobeying him, and he couldn’t keep paying attention. It was as if his entire lifetime’s worth of stress had barreled down on him, in one instant. But he was keeping his temper much better than he had in 1993; his shields had allowed him to release frissons of rage in cycles, rather than burst unpredictably from emotion to the next. He took a deep breath. Poppy had told him that one day, the post traumatic stress disorder would catch up to him, but he thought he would keep from falling apart until the war was over. Well, the war hadn’t quite started here.

Lily snapped her fingers. “Sev?” She was peering into his eyes, still annoyed, but her expression was softening. He caught a glimpse of grief, irritation, worry, and care.

“Perhaps the pressures of my position have been undermining my ability to--”

“Be a human being?”

“Moderate my emotions, as I would prefer to,” he grimaced. “And perhaps my younger self has assimilated, or I have integrated my two selves--this wasn’t normal in 1996, Lily, but I know I’ve always been volatile. The past five years have been difficult. And my younger, less-ordered mind finds it more difficult to cope with the uncertainties of my presence here--”

“Or you’re a berk,” Lily corrected.

“Would you stop picking at me? I’m not your slavish little follower, Evans, I’ve grown past that. I’m not going to lick at your heels for forgiveness.”

Lily turned red. “I think you should apologize to me.”

“Why?” he demanded.

“For snarling at me when all I was doing, was trying to help. To be a good friend. Would you prefer for me to leave you alone? I did that before. In your...plane. I could very easily do that again.”

Cold fingers tracing down his spine: Severus paled. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t want to push you away.”

“But you do that anyway. You’d think you’d stop doing that. With twenty years to grieve.”

“I never said I ever got closure.” Pained, he closed his eyes. Lily’s furious face, blotchy with tears, distorted with rage, swam into focus--he would never leave this town, and he hadn’t. He had never left Cokeworth, he had never left Hogwarts. He had remained stagnant, his entire life, and even gotten worse. Perhaps that was unfair--he had done okay in his twenties, but had lost his mind after Charity, and Potter hadn’t helped. Poppy was right, perhaps, in saying he needed to look into mood stabilizers. He could not return home this out of control.

“Closure doesn’t exist,” Lily said bitterly. “If it did, I would’ve got to say good-bye to my best friend. Instead of coaching his future self through emotional literacy.”

“Do you hate me?” he asked plaintively.

“What kind of fucking manipulative question is that?”

“I apologize,” Severus said gravely. He looked around the classroom. The day was drawing on. He straightened his shoulders, fixed his face. “Whatever myself may be, it is more closely linked to this body than either of us assumed. I might be more your ‘Sev’ than the grown Severus.” He rubbed his forehead. “There is no such thing as a separate soul, but memories can be separated--and I have always found it difficult to concentrate here. I’ve been brooding. Drinking more, I rarely went to the pub on my summers off, perhaps lurking at Newcastle Wharf was a means to avoid confronting the uncertainties of my future. I feel...removed by time.”

Lily regarded him. “Your apology is preliminarily accepted. I’m still angry with you, but I know you’ll work this out.”

Severus touched her arm. “Do understand that I have more experience in this war than you,” he said. “And I have much less privacy now, and more and less to lose.”

“So you’re losing it.”

“Seems like it.”

“Tell me how it goes with Dumbledore.”

“Tell me when you’re no longer angry with me.”

Lily sighed. “Sev. I’m always angry. I want to fucking kill Potter and burn down the Headmaster’s office, and punch Mulciber in the face. I hate it here. But I love magic. And I don’t want to go home.”

Severus paused. He had always thought her the Golden Girl of Gryffindor, Saint Lily of muggleborn magic, shattering barriers, changing the world with a sly grin and a charm so breathtakingly ingenious, one had to embrace the beauty in her. Slughorn, that old bigot, raved about her, stopped supporting the Knights of Walpurgis after seeing her perform her Charmed landscapes, sucking everyone into the wonder of the first boat ride to Hogwarts. He’d always thought she loved it in the magical world. It seemed to embrace her so much more readily than it had ever took him. “I always thought you loved it here. I didn’t know you hated it too.”

Lily looked at him askance. “I thought--I thought you liked it too.” She stepped closer. “I think we need to talk.”

“Isn’t that all we do?” He offered her a smile, and was delighted to see her give a wry smile.

 

They went on a walk around the Lake, skirting the side where Potter had attacked him. Neither of them had classes until the late afternoon, and they still had three hours before Arithmancy. The day was fine, sun slotting between the clouds. They climbed a little outcropping that jutted into the water, hiding in the crevices of the rock. Lily took her shoes and socks off and dipped her feet in.

“It’s not too cold,” she informed him. He raised an eyebrow. Surely she did not expect him to copy her. He settled next to her. A breeze ruffled their hair; he rubbed his sleeves, and then realized he could push them back. He didn’t have a Dark Mark. He pulled his sleeves to his elbows and marvelled at the sallow blankness of his skin.

Lily noticed him staring at his arms. “You didn’t tan,” she said.

Severus shrugged. “I didn’t spend too much time out in the sun. I look a little...wilted.”

“Not like there will be much time for sunbathing in Scotland. You normally tan, though, right? You don’t burn. Your grandmother’s Arab, isn’t she?”

Severus’ hackles rose. He didn’t know how to respond to that, and was bothered by the way she phrased it. His grandmother was Yemeni, she had immigrated to Shiremoor in the Anglo-Yemeni wave as a child and met his grandfather Prince at Hogwarts. He had never met them, they would have nothing to do with him. “My mother’s mother is a Shafiq. I think the owner of the apothecary in Newcastle is a cousin. I don’t know. We never talk about it. You know how my father is. We don’t talk about it.” He stretched out, looked up to the sky: the clouds were beginning to thin, he was beginning to perspire. “I never met my grandmother, anyway. She was very angry my mother married a muggle.”

Lily was watching the sky. “Do you ever think about what life would be like, if we were normal?”

“Muggles, you mean.”

“You know what I mean. If we’d been stuck in Cokeworth. Going to the local comprehensive.”

“You would’ve been too posh to talk to me.”

Lily laughed. “Don’t say that.” She grinned. “Perhaps we would’ve been scholarship students. Gone to a prep school in Newcastle. You at Cambridge, studying pharmacology, curing cancer and the common cold. And I at the Royal College of Arts.”

 

“I doubt I would ever have found the economic wherewithal to pursue my dreams. I would likely have ended up pressed into a gang, running accounts or synthesizing drugs, and perpetually in prison. If I didn’t kill myself from the sheer bleakness of my fate.”

Lily paused. “But you hate it here.”

“Not as much as I hate Cokeworth. Can you imagine me working at the mill? In the mines? At the wharf?”

“I can see you as a sailor.”

Severus snorted. “Perhaps I would’ve joined the military. My father would be pleased.”

Lily pulled her feet out of the water and hugged her knees. “I miss the muggle world, sometimes. At least there I don’t have to worry about being harassed for my blood status.”

Severus shrugged. Khalil Shafiq did not like walking through certain muggle areas of Tyneside by himself, and he knew his mother sometimes got stares in Cokeworth. He took more after his father, but people still knew. Class and race tainted the British conscious, and he had no interest in playing Heathcliff to Lily’s imaginary Cathy. Neither of them were wealthy enough for that, anyway, and the terrace houses of Cokeworth would never a Victorian Romance make. Heathcliff had ended up dead; so had she.

Lily continued, “I don’t really have friends here. Well, not really. Mary and Marlene are lovely, but Mary’s so proper Edinburgh, and Marlene just breathes magic, she doesn’t understand the wonder of it. The gift of it. And she’s Quidditch-mad. I love flying, but the sport’s ridiculous, football’s much more strategy-heavy anyway.”

“I enjoy the violence.”

Lily stuck her tongue out at him, Irrationally, Severus had the sudden impulse to bite it. He blinked: for a second, he forgot that his body had urges beyond him.

“And I get along with Remus and Peter, and Benjy’s so sweet, and Latisha really is hilarious. Did you see what she was drawing in class? But they can be so patronizing when I have to ask about a custom, when I don’t understand a historical reference or shake someone’s hand instead of bowing slightly, wear the wrong style of robes or be a damn feminist!”

“At least you don’t room with the junior Death Eaters,” Severus said. “I’m their miscegenated exception. ‘Blood will out’: everything I do is credited to my grandmother’s Shafiq blood, my grandfather’s mother’s Burke blood. Nevermind that I got my mind from my father, that he was the one who forced me to keep going to school, no matter how badly I was bullied.”

Lily was silent. Motion caught Severus’ eye: a tentacle was breaking the waters, lazily tracing spirals over the surface. He thought of the mermaids and grindylows and other magical creatures living in the Lake, the gillyweed that allowed him to explore it at his leisure, the ability to live in a more flexible world. It was less flexible for Lily than it was for him.

“You know what Mulciber did to Mary, right?” she said finally. She stretched her legs out, looked away from him.

Severus drew his legs in, curled into himself. “I never caught the details.”

“He used some sort of tantric spell, to link up any sexual pleasure with her. And then pulled out his dick and proceeded to wank in front of her. Avery had her Petrified, she couldn’t escape. It’s horrible, having--pleasure forced on you. It was beyond sexual harassment. But Dumbledore didn’t think it counted as assault. No penetration, so it wasn’t rape. And it was supposed to feel good.” Her hands were trembling. “And McGonagall was gone then, she was arranging her husband’s funeral and--Slughorn just dismissed it! ‘Boys will be boys.’” Revulsion crossed her face.

Severus closed his eyes. “I didn’t know.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

 

“I am not,” Severus said sharply. “I would never lie to you. Avery made it sound like they were just teasing her. I thought they were showing off their hard-ons or some disgusting childish shit like that. I wouldn’t have--”

“What?”

Severus swallowed, hard. “When I first started teaching at Hogwarts, a fifth year Ravenclaw raped one of my first year Slytherins. He needed a maidenhead for a summoning ritual. Flitwick was absolutely useless, you know how hands-off he is when it comes to his house.” He rubbed his forehead, massaged his fingers through his hair, and sighed. “She became pregnant. And abortion’s illegal in the Wizarding World. I snuck her a potion anyway. Pomona helped me construct the case to get him expelled--we had to frame it in terms of marital rights, that he had stolen part of the dowry she would have given to her partner’s family. We had to argue that the trauma would damage her ability to participate in reproductive intercourse,” he said clinically. “Because wizards marry for children. And since he failed to summon the demon, we couldn’t get him expelled because of dark magic.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I didn’t understand what a violation rape is, until I had an eleven year old girl sobbing in my office every day. I didn’t know what the fuck to do,” he said with sudden viciousness, “all I could do was Floo call Pomona to hold her when she needed touch, because she was so scared of tall, dark-haired men she flinched whenever I came to near.”

“But she trusted you enough to come to you?”

“I take care of my Slytherins.” He looked at her directly. “I didn’t understand that Potter was stalking you, the first time around. I didn’t understand that Mulciber and Avery were rapists. Not until I had to see the damage firsthand. And I’ve spent my whole life trying to atone for that.”

Lily was growing upset. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re trying to say to me.”

“I think my dad used to rape my mother,” Severus said. “I could hear them from my room. He’d come in drunk sometimes, talking about ‘wifely duties,’ shouting she was trying emasculate him. I’ve been so inured to this, violence is part of the world I live in. Hegemonic constraints. I’m rambling, I haven’t talked to anyone about this in years. Just to Pomona, and Charity. I don’t want to talk about it. I’m sorry--I don’t--Lily, we would be running into prejudice whatever world we lived in Lily, Hogwarts or Cokeworth Comprehensive. Class and race.”

Lily pressed her lips together. “I’m more afraid of that happening to me here than there, Sev. Because I’m a muggleborn. Because I’m brilliant. Because I fucking undermine their superiority complex, just by existing, and the only way they feel secure is by beating me down. They’re gonna wage a war over people like me.”

Severus caught her eyes and saw fear, frustration, and worry, buried rage and terror. He wished he could smooth the tension from her shoulders. “And I know I wouldn’t survive there rather than here, Lily. You have to understand, it’s different for you than it is for me. Regardless, I fought that war to keep you here.”

“Joined the fucking Death Eaters for me?”

“I thought I could protect you.”

“Bullshit.”

“I never claimed to have your foresight.”

To his horror, Lily began to cry, burying her face in her hands, shoulders shaking. “I’m so fucking scared, Sev. Potter feeling so fucking entitled that he’d waltz right into my house, poor Mary--you know she nearly didn’t come back? And she dropped all her classes she shared with him. I hate this!” she sobbed. “What are they going to do to us?”

“If it makes you feel better, I know Mary survives the war unscathed and is happily married to a Ministry wizard named Reginald Cattermole. He works in the Department of Magical Maintenance. They have three children. Every Halloween since 1983, she and I meet and have a glass of wine in your memory.”

Lily looked up from her hands in shock. “She hated you,” she croaked.

“And we both love you.” He edged a little closer. “Lily, I don’t know what you want me to do, but do you want a handkerchief?”

Lily sniffed loudly. Her eyes were bloodshot, the green of her irises even more brilliant than ever: that particular Avada Kedava light. Brutally, she wiped at them. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s all coming out.” She tried a smile, and a sob came out instead. She buried her face in her knees. “It’s been a stressful week. Mary’s been--and Marlene, she just doesn’t get it. And I have to keep strong for her. Golden Gryffindor Muggleborn Queen, that’s me. And I’m supposed to die in a few years anyway.” She keened slightly.

“I never realized…” Severus trailed off. It would not be appropriate for him to take up more of the conversation than he already had. He cleared his throat. “Do you want me to put an arm around you?”

Lily raised her head. She shook no, then nodded yes. “I’ll get your robes all snotty.” He wrapped a careful arm around her.

“I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to confide in you,” he mused.”But I think I need to borrow some of your catharsis.”

Lily let out a hoarse laugh. “Of course I can’t handle you living through a fucking war and counselling you about your grief about all your friends being evil or dead or both, and being stuck in Hogwarts forever and always, and my son with my stalker being a stupid little shit. But who else do you have?”

 

They moved down from the jetty onto the beach, Lily casting a cushion charm that had them suspended two inches off the sand. She curled up on his arm, which was less bony than it was three months before, he was pleased to notice. His body still didn’t quite feel his own, but it was getting there, and he really needed to gain more weight, more muscle.

“Why do you think you’ve been so moody, lately?” Lily asked, looking directly into his eyes. Her eyes were still inflamed, still that killer green.

Severus turned away. “I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t know quite who I am--I do not have the control and moderation of the man I was beyond the Veil, and here I do not have the independence. I’m stuck. I can read, but over the summer I couldn’t even brew, research, even do my full exercise routine. Partly because I haven’t built up the strength at this point. Beyond the Veil, I was always only one more Gryffindor prank from blowing up--but my classroom duties, my obligations to the Headmaster always reigned me back in. Now, I’m stuck in my worst nightmares, constantly at risk of pushing you away, fending off Potter’s little gang from invading your home, a useless muggle freak in Cokeworth. I couldn’t even pick a fight, to blow off tension. I didn’t start winning bar fights until I was eighteen. And Filius and I would duel, whenever the students would get too much. I don’t feel my age. Any age--unmoored in time, stuck in inaction….”

Lily edged in closer. “Look at me,” she whispered.

Severus thought this was following the plot of one his wet dreams. “What?” he said, a little testily.

Lily was staring at him cross-eyed, tongue-sticking out. He smirked, then finally let out a laugh. “You’re ridiculous,” he said, pulling away. Lily pushed herself up on one arm.

“This entire situation beggars beliefs,” she informed him. “And we have class in an hour, and it’s too late for lunch. Let’s raid the kitchens.”

The sun in her eyes, gloaming her hair, and the smell of salt off the squid’s natural habitat intoxicated him. A muscle relaxed in his right shoulder. “I am heartily grateful,” he said, “that you have to stayed to help me sort this out.”

Lily was smiling. “And I’m grateful you’re trying to save my life. Me, married to Potter, dead barely into my twenties?” She touched his cheek. Pained, he closed his eyes. He never knew what they did with her work, her singing canvases, the little charmed postcards she would send--or her fantastic scrapbook diaries, that she had been keeping since before they had met. “Come on, Sev. Let’s go.” And they went. Mercifully, no one bothered them.

 

Severus spent the rest of Thursday in the library with Lily, quietly working on their Arithmancy work. When she left to go to detention, she squeezed his shoulder. He looked up and saw his exhaustion mirrored in her young face. Care and worry: those words meant the same thing in Latin, cura, and perhaps he should write it as a sigil for her, to help her sleep at night. He touched her hand lightly. Lucius was this casually affectionate, when they were in private, as was Pomona.

“I’m sorry for cursing you,” Lily said quietly. “I realize I didn’t apologize for that.”

Upset rushed him, he had to drop his gaze, he did not understand what he was feeling. Very few people had ever apologized to him; but he rarely apologized either, refused to examine regret. Occlumency blocked; it did not assimilate. “It’s fine. I was being--petty.” Emmeline’s cold disappointment came back to him: how humiliating, to have been taken as an adult and thus dismissed. He needed to speak to her.

She tapped his shoulder. “Let’s be less violent with each other. Try a little tenderness, yeah?”

Severus snorted. “I’m allergic to sentimentality.”

Lily laughed, but he did not understand why. “It’s all so easy,” she singsonged, and walked away.

He finished his proof not longer after, and grabbed an arithmancy text on probability and time, to peruse later. He ran into Potter on his way out and reflexively grabbed his wand, but Potter blushed and hurried away before Severus could even adjust his face into a sneer. Whatever McGonagall had said, it had finally gotten through to him. Lily must have mentioned the bullying; perhaps she mentioned the entire “trying to murder him via an irresponsible dark creature” controversy of last year, too. Severus blinked wearily. He was adjusting: last year, not twenty years ago. Hopefully, Dumbledore would be able to sort this out. He did not want to stay this helpless.

Exhaustion hit him when he reached the dorm. He curled up in bed, intending to continue to research his predicament, but fell asleep and woke up to Rosier padding out for his usual morning run. He cast a quick tempus charm: 6 am. He was to meet with Dumbledore in two hours. He closed his eyes, and suddenly anxiety jolted him upright. He cast tempus again, just to be sure: 7 am. He had fallen asleep. This was the usual exhaustion since the Dark Lord’s return, but normally he had a better sense of time than this. Wearily, he shifted out of bed, running his fingers through his hair, against his beard, heading to the bathroom. His beard was getting greasy, feeling unpleasant against his skin, he had never grown it out more than a bit of accidental stubble. He washed carefully, and dressed neatly, tying his hair back. Perhaps the shock of tidiness would convince Dumbledore to believe his story. He could barely recognize himself in the mirror, hopefully Albus would understand that something had changed as well.

For breakfast he managed a piece of toast. Avery shook his head at him. “You should eat more,” he said good-naturedly.

Severus grunted.

“And you’re getting crumbs in your beard. I like the look, though. Makes you look older. Distinguished. Did you take a dance class over the summer? Your posture’s been better.”

Severus, brushing his beard hurriedly, shoved away from the table and stalked out. Behind him, he heard Mulciber ask, “What’s his problem this time?”

Still audible, Avery replied, “Who knows? He’s half-muggle, you know how they get. It takes him awhile to remember how to be civilized again.”

At 7:45 this morning, the halls were still serene, light filtering through the heavy windows, distorting the shadows on the flagstones. Suits of armor creaked to stare as he passed; a few saluted. The castle knew his tread; it had taken to him, as a child, showed him nooks in which to hide, the occasional garden, the perfect research laboratory out by that tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy, he had ended up moving in there his seventh year, after Rosier finally told Wilkes he had no interest in any kind of sex, and Wilkes decided to take revenge by shagging someone new every week--without casting the damn Muffliato spell, he’d invented it for precisely that use. He hated communal living.

A few portraits nodded hello, the Grey Lady floated by and offered him a sad smile, they had always gotten along. She had liked Potions, and intense dark young men, and looked out for the more studious Ravenclaws. They used to chat a bit, looking through the shelves in the Restricted Section. She told him he reminded her of a boy she once knew, though that one had been much more charming than he was, of course, though she liked his sense of humor better. She had been a good agony aunt to the death of his relationship with Lily, the disastrous experiment with Wilkes, the let-down that was Florence, and had counselled him through the breakdown with Charity, all those years ago. Severus sighed slightly. At least he didn’t have to see her anymore, the constant worry she would blow up at him, that she would weaponize the students, punish his Slytherins. He missed Minerva’s common sense, the sharpness with which she cut through Charity’s particularly catty comments, and the reminder that it wasn’t his fault. So many things were his fault, he had never been one to shirk responsibility: but Charity’s temper, her tendency to drink, her days of desolation could not be his responsibility. Even when she showed up in his quarters, begging for a hug.

Climbing up the Grand Staircase, Severus breathed the taint of Mnemosyne out, tapping the banister one-two-three every two steps, grounding himself in the touch of marble and the light shuffle of his feet, the smell of magic (like ozone) and wax polish, the creak of the stairs above him as they began to wake and reorder themselves for the day. He did not have to think about Charity Burbage; he was free. But, he thought, reaching the third floor, and turning down to face the Headmaster’s gargoyles, he had always been prone to brooding. And Charity had been so much like Lily, in her love of music, the wonder of magic, the effortlessness in which she switched from witch to woman, when they went on dates in the muggle world--and look where that had ended, Lily died and Charity turned out to be an alcoholic and between the two of them, he had ended up so crippled emotionally he had purposefully sabotaged his only chance at an intimate relationship, too afraid to commit to Sturgis. Sturgis had known he was a spy, it had been ridiculous, they had liked each other, they were able to bitch for hours, and the sex was pretty good--why he throw that away? Because he hated himself, that’s why.

“Ooh, you look stormy today,” the gargoyle chirped. It had tigereye set into its eye sockets and lapis lazuli claws. “What’s the matter?” It rested its granite head in one chipped hand. “I sense the stench of self-hatred and regret.”

Severus glared.

“Ah, don’t be like that, pet.” The gargoyle waved a wing at him. “The Headmaster’s going to be late, anyway. Tell Uncle Gary what’s wrong. I’m good with matters of the heart.”

“How late?” Severus said suspiciously.

“Oh, Merlin knows what that man does. Half an hour or so. Come on, it’s not like either of us has anything better to do, and you’ll just brood to yourself anyway. And one of those Gryffindor troublemakers slipped Veritaserum into Filch’s floor polish, as well as a very strong compulsion charm, so we’re all going to be babbling a bit today.”

“What a waste,” Severus opined. Of fucking human existence, why the fuck did they even exist. He was pleased to note that he managed to bite that back instinctively; his self-restraint was coming back.

“Tell me about it, and I’m stranded here. Gonna miss out on the fun.” The gargoyle turned its tigereyes on him, and Severus felt the charm of the stones, the smell of the wax begin to prod insistently at his mind, he could probably block it easily, but fuck it all, this was probably some test. Severus found himself explaining, “I was in a very bad relationship and so sabotaged my last chance for a healthy one because I was afraid of being hurt again, and I know I’ve so isolated him he wouldn’t ever want to try again.”

“Your ‘last chance’? Now then, pet, you’re too young to be talking like that--and it’s not like you’re repulsive, and if you try a more positive attitude--”

“The inanity of suggestion that a mere change in attitude would be able to rectify every insult I have ever rendered, any pain I have endured, is appalling,” Severus snarled. “A fixed smile will not fix my life. Situationally, there is little I can do--”

“So there’s no use in dwelling on it, then,” the gargoyle countered.

“I am obsessive by nature.”

“Hm. Have you tried finding a new hobby? The Headmaster knits, but you don’t seem the yarn type. Have you thought about needlepoint? It’s an excuse to stab something. Might be therapeutic. And there’s some interesting sigil-magic you can work into that.”

Severus sat on the floor next to the gargoyle. It shifted slightly and patted him on the back. “Is this what my life is?” he wondered aloud. “Bamboozled to babbling by baffling buffons? Drat, those dastards must have driven--” he pulled on his shields, the hallway suddenly snapped into focus, and the air grew a bit colder, “a dash of valerian and passionflower root, that was terrible alliteration, what did they do to that babbling beverage, the root must have been stewed in saltwater, those imbeciles.”

The gargoyle regarded him fondly. Severus, disgruntled, attempted to duck behind his hair, but forgot he had it tied back, and tried to recover the brief spasm by rolling his neck.

“Have you tried yoga?” the gargoyle asked.

When Albus finally arrived, humming to himself, it was to see a dark young man arguing hotly with a statue over the merits of lavender versus valerian, whether or not it was possible to become addicted to an herb--“one cannot be addicted to a mood,” “cor, it’s not the mood I’m talking about, it’s the plant that causes the mood”--and if valerian, taken in too large of dosage, could become toxic.

“I have a perfectly healthy liver,” Severus was saying, the gargoyle was smirking, the distraction was complete, but then Severus glanced up. Albus had that obnoxious “just-fucked” aura all golden and gooey around him, he must have stayed the night with Elphias. Abruptly, he stood, smoothing his robes. “Headmaster.”

“My apologies for my tardiness, Mr. Snape,” Dumbledore beamed benevolently. “And it seems such a shame to tear you away from such a riveting conversation.”

“He’s alright,” the gargoyle said dismissively. “But you should get him to check his liver.”

Severus scowled.

 

The Headmaster’s Office stunk of lemon sugar. Severus’ nostrils flared, and he held back a sneeze. Albus swept past him and settled in his far too fluffy purple armchair, behind his enormous desk, and gazed at him over his half-moon spectacles. A few portraits began to wake. Phineas Nigellus was watching with one eye open; he had always liked to look after his Slytherins. Severus sat in the chair across from him. A little crooning issued forth from an ash tray, and suddenly a little beak poked up, a beady eye. The phoenix chirped. Severus kept from smiling, particularly as one of Dumbledore’s toys, a silver spherical contraction slowly began to rotate on its axis, counterclockwise.

“He’s had his burning recently,” Severus said, feeling suddenly foolish. He folded his arms. The phoenix chick flurried its downy wings out of the ash and crept to the edge of the tray. It chirped again, more insistently. Severus raised a finger towards it and gently tickled its chin; happy, it rubbed against his hand.

Dumbledore regarded him. “Indeed. Fawkes has certainly taken to you, Mr. Snape.” He pulled out a few sheets of parchment: his transcript, Severus supposed. “Now, Professor Slughorn informed me that you would like to be moved to the seven years’ Herbology and Arithmancy classes, and Professor Sprout has assured me that you are more than capable at succeeding in the more advanced class, as has Professor Burke. And you have already taken your Potions NEWT, two years early.” His gaze suddenly pierced into Severus’; Severus carefully occluded, shutting down the frustration that this Dumbledore was not his Albus, highlighting the impatience and apprehension. “You are so eager for free time.” It was not a question, and Severus’ face hardened at the careful neutrality of his tone.

“There is a project that I would like to expedite researching,” Severus said blandly. The spherical device stopped, chimed, and slowly changed direction. “I had a...difficult encounter with the Death Room at the Department of Mysteries, a few weeks before Midsummer.”

“You should have been in school then,” Albus said, a tad sharply, and slowly withdrew his wand.

“That was the difficulty: I found myself back in school.” Severus suddenly dropped his shields, allowing color to seep into the room, sound to play back. He could hear the portraits whispering to themselves, the stomp of students rushing to classes outside, laughter from the Quidditch pitch. Dumbledore’s eyes shone coolly, as blue as a winter sky. “I thought I were dreaming, sixteen years old again, mercilessly bullied by Potter and his little gang--and bothered by the father, not the son.” He rolled back both his sleeves. “Unmarked, untarnished, and no longer your spy. Rather than the thirty-six year old Potions Master of Hogwarts School and spy for the Order of the Phoenix, I found myself Severus Snape, fifth year Slytherin, generally ignored and derided--on a dark path.”

Dumbledore said, “Legilimens.”

If you are ready, if you are prepared always I have been waiting the Mark is darkening don’t tell me you haven’t noticed to, please, my Lord, spare her, I love her, I can’t imagine life without her--I disgust you? You let him bully me, you let them drive me to the Dark, you could have saved me you were supposed to save me I was a child! I didn’t know what I was doing it’s for the greater good, I have no honor but there is still duty left, the boy has his mother’s eyes but his father’s face, walks and talks like him too you failed me!

Flabbergasted, Dumbledore drew back. “How?” he whispered.

Severus, eyes cold, back ramrod straight, spoke: “Lucius Malfoy had his eye on me, the half-blood Prince, a quarter Shafiq, an eighth Burke, enough nobility to almost redeem the mud. I have always been drawn to those who could teach me how to protect myself, and when you rewarded Potter’s little gang for nearly murdering me, I knew I could no longer ask for anyone’s sanctuary. Even Slughorn steered me towards the Malfoys and the Blacks, and it helped that Potter’s little crusade against Slytherin dark,” he spat, “wizards, nevermind that I was eleven when he started hexing me, four-on-one, drove even more of us to Rosier, to Mulciber. I needed protection. I knew there was little opportunity, as a half-Muggle--with a Muggle name, no matter my mother’s credential, our society is still patriarch--millrat, if I applied without scholarship. I needed protection. I was alone. I didn’t think they were serious about murder--I thought it was the usual xenophobic rhetoric.” He smiled faintly, thinking about his father, who despite his own xenophobia had married a half-Yemeni witch. “I can understand the desire to preserve tradition.” He thought again of his mother, the grandmother he never met. “And then I overheard the prophecy.”

Dumbledore pointed his wand straight between Severus’ eyes. He did not flinch. Severus continued, “The one born with the power to defeat the Dark Lord approaches, born to those who have thrice defied him, as the seventh month dies….I do not know the second half. You had me thrown out of the pub.” He smiled crookedly. “My father had died, my mother had demanded I never contact her again, and I had totally alienated my closest friend--only to send her to her death. You see, Headmaster, twenty years ago, after a Defense Against the Dark Arts exam, James Potter and Sirius Black strung me upsidedown up in the air in front of our entire year of students. Lily Evans, on a self-righteous kick, demanded they let me down--and I called her a mudblood for interfering. I thought I could take care of myself.” His smile grew mocking, his eyes cold as flint. “They scourgified me so I could not breathe, ended up stripping me--they took my pants off, in front of forty other students, choking on soap. Lupin didn’t do a damn thing about it. I thought Pettigrew was going to wet himself with glee.”

“I don’t see how this is relevant,” Dumbledore said, lowering his wand, but not breaking eye contact.

“We never made it up, after that. Lily and I. And then she married him, Potter, and had a fucking child by him--born close to midnight, July 31st.” Severus bared his teeth into a grotesque grin. Dumbledore’s grip tightened on his wand. “I went to you to save her. Spied for you. Sent my friends to their death, to Azkaban. Malfoy, of course, slithered out of trouble, but I gave you the tipoff that killed Evan Rosier, Wilkes. I took down Mulciber myself--he’s in Azkaban, now...but she died, anyway. She and her husband. You failed to keep your promise, but you kept me on mine--a very short leash. I spent ten years reporting on former Death Eaters   
for you, teaching Potions and keeping Slytherin alive, and guarding the Potter brat--your chosen one,” he sneered, “not that you’ve ever done much to keep him safe. I’ve kept him from getting hexed off a broom, from being eaten by a werewolf--that you hired--and flew straight to the Department of Mysteries when the boy was foolish enough to fall straight into the Dark Lord’s trap.”

“And you fell into the trap instead,” Dumbledore said.

Severus quirked his head. “The Dark Lord had been attempting to possess him, sending him visions through some psychic connection established when he tried to kill him. He sent him a dream of himself torturing the boy’s godfather in the Hall of Prophecy, at the Department of Mysteries. I knew there were Death Eaters there, I alerted you and the Order, and went straight to the Department of Mysteries, to try to distract my...colleagues. But I was caught by the magic of the Death Room, and woke up here.” He spread his hands. “Twenty years into the past, in the midst of my worst memory, as James Potter hoisted me up into the air. But this time, I did not call Lily a mudblood. And she knows.” He smiled thinly. “She guessed. I have been acting...quite irregularly. I am thirty-six, after all. It is difficult to remember the restraints of my adolescent years.”

Dumbledore sat back down in his chair. “Well, Mr. Snape--or should I say, Professor?” Severus inclined his head. “You have certainly disrupted the time stream.”

Severus shrugged. “I believe I walked onto a parallel plane, if you like. But I am offering you my knowledge of what is coming, and whatever proof of truth you need, in return for your aid to return to my own time. The Dark Lord has returned, and I promised--you--the Albus of my reality, that I would stand with him. The Order needs me; I am their only spy, and Gryffindors as they are they have totally isolated any other Slytherin and possible cool-colored allies--”

Dumbledore raised a hand. “Mr. Snape, please slow down. Let’s have a cup of tea and discuss our options. Here,” he rummaged around in his pockets, “would you like a sherbet lemon? They always calm me down.”

Severus closed his eyes and counted one two this man was a fucking fool three four actually he terrified the Dark Lord five six he believed him didn’t he seven eight what had his life become nine ten, and ground out, “No thank you.”

 

After a bracing cup of tea, which admittedly did make Severus feel less anxious, they pulled out a pensieve, Dumbledore asking questions and Severus supplying memories. They stayed in his office well past lunch, and by the end of it Severus was exhausted, his head was ringing, and he was having difficulty focusing his eyes. Dumbledore said he believed him, and when Severus offered to swear an Unbreakable Vow--a little desperately--in return for help returning to the Death Room, Dumbledore shook his head, alarm in his bright blue eyes, and said, “I trust you.” He glanced into the pensieve again--Severus had given him a memory of perusing Tom Riddle’s diary--and frowned.

“You don’t look well. Please, sit.”

Severus was too muddled too even snap back, bitterly, because it wasn’t as if Dumbledore had noticed he wasn’t well when he had been attacked by a werewolf. Wearily he made eye contact, nodded, and sunk down, putting his head in his hands. Still, he did not miss Dumbledore’s flinch.

“I apologize,” Dumbledore said softly. He snapped his fingers. A tray of simple tomato soup and fresh bread, and a silver pot of coffee, appeared on his desk. “Do eat. But I am sorry, for so badly mishandling your case with Sirius Black.”

“I do not want to listen to this,” Severus said. “May I return to…” he trailed off. To where? He was begging him, send him home.

“I was worried what his family would do, if I pushed for expulsion. And I thought Mr. Potter would talk some sense into him--they’re such cheerful boys…” he stopped at Snape’s glower. “My apologies. I did not know they are as vicious as you say. Professor McGonagall has been saying--”

“Please, can we discuss when you can arrange for me to return through the Veil?”

Dumbledore looked at him sadly. “I am afraid it will not be as simple as that, Mr. Snape. I have a hunch, and my hunches, if you do not mind my arrogance--”

“You were just apologizing for your arrogance--”

“Ah, I can see how we became friends,” Dumbledore twinkled at him. Severus, stony-faced, began to eat the soup. “But I have a hunch, and I will contact my contacts in the Department, that you will not be able to return just yet. You left bodily through the Veil, but your--let us say, memories--awoke in your sixteen-year-old self.”

Severus paused. He had not considered where his body was.

Dumbledore’s face set. “In my alchemical studies, I read of a passageway in which one could barter pieces of themselves for something of equivalent worth. I would not be surprised if the Veil is one of those doorways into another life--and it looks like the Veil enacted some sort of exchange. We have to ensure you will have a physical form when you return.”

“So we need a sacrifice.”

“I believe you had already made the sacrifice,” Dumbledore said, “judging by your memories. We had made a deal: I would keep Lily safe, and you would spy for me. I failed, but you still gave me sixteen years.” He tapped another one of his contraptions, a molten set of scales. They unbalanced, the right much higher than the left. “You unfairly sacrificed your life for my cause. And it may be that the Veil decided to even out the bargain--giving you another chance as recompense.”

Severus methodically tore the bread in two and began to mop up the dregs of the soup. “But this is not time-travel, but an alternative plane. I’ve communicated with the Dumbledore of my world--I sent my Patronus through the Veil. You saw.”

Dumbledore nodded. “And no Dark wizard can cast a Patronus.”

“The maggots haven’t gotten to me yet.”

“Which brings me to my next suspicion--you can still access your plane. But I fear you will not be able to manifest yourself there physically until you honor the Veil’s part of the deal--finish off the next twenty years.”

“This is more a punishment than a reward.”

“Most men would kill to have that chance, to fix their mistakes.”

“I rather atone.”

Dumbledore closed his eyes. “Mr. Snape, you are proving yourself to be a less selfish man than me.” He chuckled to himself. “Forgive the rhyme.” Severus, scowling, stared at the scales. They were still greatly uneven. He tapped it with his wand. They flashed silver, but stayed unbalanced.

“May I go now?” Severus asked. He pointed to the pensieve. “My mind’s…”

Dumbledore glanced at the memory again, the diary flashing in the waters. He helped Severus get his memories reincorporated and walked him to the gargoyle gatekeeper. “I’ll send you a note when I have my answers from the Department, Mr. Snape. And thank you, for coming to me. You have proven yourself more honorable than--” Dumbledore stopped, and twinkled at him, patting him on the shoulder. Severus flinched. “Well, your bravery in coming to a hostile enemy--because I was your enemy when you were a student, wasn’t I?--should be commended.”

“Please,” Severus muttered, “do not mention it.” He stumbled off to his dormitory and slept confusedly, of Harry Potter and the diary, parselmouth and Lily screaming. When he awoke the room was silent but for the soft snores of his roommates, the children he had just sold to Dumbledore. He knew what he had to do. He took out his potions kit and his obsidian knife and softly walked to the bathroom, locking and warding the door.

“How many miles to Babylon?” he singsonged, slashing at his palm and marking a transitory sigil on the bathroom mirror. He picked up a candle, beeswax, from the Headmaster’s own hives, and rubbed Floo powder into it. He pulled a memory of Albus looking at his Patronus galloping across the Veil, relieved, saying, “Severus, please--thank Merlin,” and pressed it into the sign. It lit up. Lighting the candle, he began to sing:

Oft him anhaga are gebideð  
metudes miltse, þeah þe he modcearig  
geond lagulade longe sceolde  
hreran mid hondum hrimcealde sæ  
wadan wræclastas. Wyrd bið ful aræd!

Candle in one hand, wand in the other, he stepped through the mirror, continuing:

Swa cwæð eardstapa, earfeþa gemyndig,  
wraþra wælsleahta, winemæga hryre.

It was cold inside the fey realm, dark, and the candle did not provide any illumination to anything but his hand. He felt nothing but the power of his words coursing through the shapelessness, offering potentiality, and he sang: 

Gemon he selesecgas ond sincþege,  
hu hine on geoguðe his goldwine,  
wenede to wiste.  
Out of the shadows outlines slunk into view, the matter underneath his feet solidified and a breeze guttered at his candle, and he took in a breath and hissed out the same gutter splutter of the wick, “pur, πυρή, ignis in puray,” fire, the fire-place, fire at the fire-place, and the flame rose strong and steady. He was standing in the mirror over the dining room at Grimmauld Place. The Order was eating, solemnly and silently: his funeral-feast. Albus, at the head of the table, had his back to him. Potter was at his right, picking at his food, and Moody to his left. Moody suddenly looked up, but not around; Lupin, similarly, further down the table, was rubbing his nose. Feeling the darkness press on him, pressing him against the glass, he straightened his back and intoned, deepening his baritone, going for the reverb:

þinceð him on mode þæt he his mondryhten  
clyppe ond cysse, ond on cneo lecge  
honda ond heafod, swa he hwilum ær  
in geardagum giefstolas breac!

Albus turned around. Shocked, his mouth dropped open. “Severus!” Everyone turned around and began gawking.

Severus took a breath. His candle flickered, warningly. By his calculations, he had about five minutes before the passageway was closed. He did not want to be trapped between worlds, in the shapeless darkness, slowly melting away into oblivion. “Albus, I’ve been trapped through the Veil, twenty years into the past.”

“You’re looking well,” Albus acknowledged.

“Three months have passed in my time--”

“It’s only been three hours here--”

“I won’t be able to return until I reach my proper age, so says your compatriot, I’ve told him what I know of the first war--”

“Is there a possibility of timelines meshing?” Albus asked. He stroked his beard. Potter, Severus noticed distantly, was gawking at him. Was that a hint of regret and gladness he caught, in Lily’s eyes? He blinked. The boy didn’t look so much like James, now that he’d seen the real thing to compare; his face wasn’t nearly so square, more like Lily’s oval, and that was definitely Lily’s perfectly Norman nose.

 

Distractedly, he said, “I don’t know, I have three minutes to get back.” The wax was growing softer. He thought to himself, artus! It grew a bit more solid.

“Be careful. Can you walk to--”

“Don’t use his name!” Severus said wildly. “Not here!”

“--your Lord? Your cover has not been blown--”

“Yes. I must hurry, I’ll try to check in--” The wax began to pool between his fingers. “Fuck.” He turned around, and sang his way back through the mirror, as Grimmauld faded and the darkness closed in on the narrow pinprick of the portal, “How many miles to Slytherin? Two minutes and ten. Can I get there by candlelight? Yes, and back again. My heels are nimble and light, I am there now by candle-light.”

He rushed through the portal and fell headlong to the tiled floor of the Slytherin sixth years’ bathroom. He laid there a second, wax burning off his hand, into smoke, into shadow. The mirror was solid; his sigil was gone.

Mulciber walked in. “The fuck is wrong with you?” he asked, glancing at the potions kit scattered about the floor, himself prone, eyes wild, the faint smell of ozone.

Severus forced himself up to a sitting position. He rubbed his palm irritably.

Mulciber crossed his arms. “Don’t tell me you were trying to make that caffeine draught again. You’re never going to take out the hangover, just accept it. Not without better ingredients and financial backing. Although,” his eyes took on an eerie gleam, he crouched down next to Snape, “I can help you out.” He smiled diffidently, elbowed him. “Take it out in kind.”

Severus, disgusted, pulled himself up. With a brisk wave of his wand, his potions kit resolved itself. He picked it up. “I’ll take that under advisement.”

“Really? We can--”

“And having considered it, and remembering my best advice, I must respond: no.” He walked towards the shower, murmuring a stinging hex onto his potions’ kit briefcase, and disrobed. Stepping into the shower, the cold shocking him back to life, he thought to himself, what a hell life it’s been.


	10. The Sacred Profane

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your kind words, and I hope you enjoy this chapter, which is finally an action chapter. Major stuff happens here, that’ll ripple for the next twenty years and onward.  
> On Remus and Lily: I have a lot of issues with Remus Lupin and his relationship with Severus and with Nymphadora Tonks. I don’t believe in character-bashing, so I’m going to be as compassionate as I can be, but Remus is incredibly manipulative, and a master at gaslighting Snape.  
> On relationships: I do not queerbait. Severus, in this story, is very definitely and actively pansexual. This is a Snily fic, mixing the various kinds of love, and those loves are going to change with time. Lily is still only sixteen. Severus is an adult, though realizing he is not mature. They will be sexually involved with other people. They will be sexually involved with each other, very eventually and somewhat sporatically. They will be romantically involved with other people. They are somewhat romantically involved right now--but you don’t need to be fucking and monogamous to reciprocally, romantically love someone. Lily will have at least three long term relationships in this story. Severus will have two. And he won’t stop being queer because he sleeps with or finds himself attracted to cis het women.  
> Very few people end up with the first person they dated, and people still break up and fall in love well into old age. Their relationship is dynamic, and both of them are very concerned with having a strong, healthy, equal, and lasting partnership--whatever that might be.  
> In conclusion, this is a fic about getting closure, about growing up and moving on and healing. That is my end goal for Severus--that he will find a measure of peace.   
> On another note--just took the Pottermore wand quiz to figure out Snape’s wand (answering in his character), and he got a cypress wand, dragon heartstring core, 13 and a half inches and slightly yielding. The Harry Potter Wiki says that owners of cyprus wands always die heroic deaths. Remus Lupin’s wand was the same, but with unicorn hair, shorter and pliable. Interestingly enough, Lily’s is--canonically--of willow, which is good for healing magic, but is for insecure people. (Ron also had a willow wand.)
> 
>  
> 
> Disclaimer: I don’t own this fic. The portrayal of Dumbledore owes a lot to plutoplex’s “Unrequited”. My words are my own. As usual, there are quotes from the books, movies, and Cursed Child, and information from Pottermore, littered about the text.
> 
> Content Warning: Remus Lupin being sketchy, Snape being incredibly creepy with dark magic (there’s a very valid reason why Lily dumped him, what he does is just as creepy--if not more so--than James), dated and so offensive language about trans identities (it’s the ‘70s), ableism.

The days passed quickly. Severus felt like he was dreaming, emptily sleepwalking from pensieve’d memory with Dumbledore to deja-vu class, and only Lily’s concerned glance, Emmeline Vance’s lingering touch as she adjusted his (impeccable) posture while dueling reminded him that he was stuck. Twenty years would pass before he could discharge his burden, before his guilt would pass. Listening to Mulciber rhapsode on the grosser dark arts, Severus wondered if redemption could be real. He would leave the dungeons and wander, so assured half the first years assumed he was a professor, brooding over the present past. Dumbledore said most would kill for a chance to relive their youth, but he felt no relief, just the crushing depression that his job was not done, and he could not do it. He hated feeling out of control.

Latisha Randle started sitting with him at the library, as did Yatin Bhagat; they had all sat together for the carriage ride to the castle. It was nice to see more of Yatin; they were now in Arithmancy and Herbology together, and had similar muggle-structured methodology. Yatin was working on a non-addictive catalyst for the Draught of Peace. The two of them actually published a new recipe together, three years from now, that was less addictive but more difficult to make. Severus did not want to take credit for Yatin’s work. Ironically, it was stressing him out, but Latisha proved a good counterpoint to them. She hadn’t sorted Ravenclaw for nothing. Severus quite liked her, the way she would blink slowly, raised an eyebrow, and smirk when someone did something foolish, like when Black managed to set himself on fire trying to wordlessly hex Severus during DADA. He knew she had a kid very young, she had ended up with some Gryffindor named Something Jordan, produced Lee, who he liked, the kid was the Weasley Twins’ conscience and the best in his year about lab safety. Emmy put them all doing basic blocks, two casting against one shield, and as he was boredly defending one day he realized that Lee Jordan was born in 1978, so there was a high probability that Latisha was already pregnant. What was up with the wizarding folk of his generation, unable to cast a basic prophylactics charm?

Black was obnoxious as usual, but it was only he and Pettigrew bothering him in the halls, and they were not fast enough to get him cornered. Potter, surprisingly enough, avoided him. Severus could never manage to catch his eye to get a glimpse of what he was thinking. Lupin, though, Lupin was fucking everywhere, smiling and nodding and humming, calling him by his personal name and asking how his day was going. “Badly, since you’ve appeared in it,” Severus snarled, but Lupin would just smile sadly and everyone in the hall would tut and his temper would rise and he’d have to hurry away before he grabbed him by the throat. He thought about siccing Mulciber and Wilkes on him, and then he remembered what happened to Mary, and felt sick, and had to jog twice around the Lake before he felt sane again.

Mary McDonald was finally showing up to classes, flanked protectively by Lily and Marlene. The Gryffindors more or less enveloped her, further separating themselves from the other houses. Severus did not blame them. He had instructed his Slytherins to do much the same. He rarely had a chance to see Lily. She was always with Mary, and Lupin started dogging their footsteps. Severus presumed that Gryffindor males wanted to feel involved, and he was the best behaved of the lot. Still, Lily charmed little notes to appear in his books, and once he found a doodle of him as Potions Master, dark and thunderous, sneering down at a little boy who looked like James Potter. Guiltily, he kept them, even the one of him bullying Harry Potter. They were cute, little animations of Hagrid dancing with the Giant Squid, a sketch of him done up like a punk (not dissimilar from how he dressed in his early twenties, when he wandered through the Muggle world and needed a break from Lucie Rosier’s relentless haute-couture). His favorite, though, was a self-portrait she had done during their Charms lecture: herself in muggle clothes, a green sweater and bell-bottoms, in the midst of what would have become the Great Hall if Lupin hadn’t nudged her and scrawled, What are you doing? Severus wanted to set his head on fire.

He waited until the first Hogsmeade weekend to report to the Dark Lord. It took him awhile to pick a memory to lead him through the barrier, but he finally settled on the moment after Voldemort had finished meting out his punishment for being late. He set everything neatly in the cauldron: blood drawn from the arm that took the Mark, to draw him to the Dark Lord; his semen, for steadying the connection to this plane; a few strands of red hair he founds and his robes and the mucus taken from the handkerchief he had lent Lily, to bind him back to her. She was his lodestone. The memory, he stirred in last. Dark potions required a piece of the brewer; he was glad that it didn’t require actual flesh. He used a larger, thicker candle, for the catalyst. Doublechecking his wards on the bathroom door, he filled a beaker with the leftover potion and tucked it into his robes, just in case he became trapped in the shadows. Taking a deep breath, he painted the potion-sigil onto the mirror with his wand. He lit the candle, wordlessly and wandless, and stepped through the mirror.

There was a dull gray path unevenly pushing out of the shadow, better defined than the last spell--fertile matter was powerful stuff. Five steps in, the path suddenly split seven ways. Severus, shocked, stopped. The candle-flame flickered: artus, he spelled quickly. He lifted the arm that once bore the mark and concentrated, hoping for a tug in the right direction. His nostrils flared. He walked one path, in two steps, and saw a glimpse of a grail; another showed him ruins and a ring; a third, a tiara shining amidst dusty shelves; a fourth, a necklace in what resembled Grimmauld Place. He padded back to the nexus-point. He could still seen the bathroom mirror behind him. Two paths were closer than the others, almost interwoven; he saved those for last, and walked the last. Unlike the others, it solidified into texture as he walked it, cobblestone, almost lending him a wall--he could feel the darkness weave itself, slowly, into a solid, at his side.

The portal resolved itself into a window, locked and closed. Severus was surprised; he had done this spell a few times, first as a game at the same bodily age--and he had gotten his left foot stuck through the mirror, had to amputate, and then Skelegro it the first time around--and had never seen or read of it having this much power. He leaned in. There, staring into space, was Harry Potter, seated at his desk in a muggle house, presumably Petunia’s. He was pensive, stroking the cover of a photo album. Suddenly, the boy stopped. Sighing, he leaned down and pulled out a large leatherbound sketchbook--Lily’s diary.

“What?” Severus said aloud. The boy looked up and across. His gaze--Lily’s eyes, killer green--locked on Severus. Harry leapt up and bounded to the window.

“Snape!” he shouted. “Professor Snape!” He gestured excitedly to the book on the table. “I know who you are! Moody told me! It’s--did she tell you? Snape!” He brandished Lily’s diary at him.

Severus stared at him incredulously. Surely the boy was not Voldemort. He noted the belated title, as well. He must have fucked up the spell--Lily’s hair must have drawn him there. Disgusted, he walked away. He’d deal with this in twenty years. He returned to the nexus, candle still burning bright, and followed the interlocking roads to what he hoped was actually Lord Voldemort.

The Dark Lord was seated in front of a fire, stroking Nagini. Severus lifted an eyebrow: he recognized the parlor of Malfoy Manor’s best guest suite. Perhaps his master shared in the snake’s essence; he remembered, vaguely, Pettigrew talking about milking Nagini. He cleared his throat.

“My Lord,” he enunciated, “I have returned to give my report.”

 

Lord Voldemort was a pale, thin creature, all sinew and strange polished smoothness. He undulated around the chair, Nagini winding around his torso. “Severus Alexander,” he hissed. “You have returned to me.”

Severus did not twitch. Just as carefully, gracefully, he kneeled, wand twisted backwards, away from his master. “My Lord,” he bowed his head. “Through the shadows I come.” He smiled ironically. “Beyond the Veil, in an alternate plane, but I come. Always.”

The Dark Lord rolled back on his neck and stared ruddily. “You are not...in shadow?” Merlin, that he had lapped up this melodramatic circumlocution about death as a boy.

“The Veil pulled me into an alternate universe, where you are a MW and running for Minister, and I am but sixteen.”

“But still a Slytherin.”

Voldemort’s moments of humor were always unnerving. Worse, these flickers of humanity usually heralded an outburst, a furious Crucio.

“That can never vary.”

Voldemort’s tongue darted out and moistened his lips. “And when will you return to me? Come out of the cold?”

“I’ve contacted Rookwood, who is still a member of the Department of Mysteries here. In essence, one hour for you is a month for me, and I must wait for this body to be fully grown to step through the Veil and return.” His lips quirked. “There is a space still remaining for me, and I must grow to it.”

“Return to me, then, when you are able,” Voldemort sneered. “Fate has her constraints. Have you reported to Dumbledore yet?”

Severus hung his head. “No, my Lord,” he lied. He could not say he used his own judgement, Voldemort punished moments of ingenuity the worst, that was why Crabbe and Goyle pretended to be so stupid and Bellatrix became so slavish. Before, he used to reward--up to a point.

“Do so,” Voldemort stepped back. Nagini hissed, licking at his neck. He crooned at her in Parseltongue, and suddenly whipped back to the mirror, red eyes staring Severus straight to the soul. “I would scar you for your insolent irresponsibility.”

Severus dropped his head into the shadows. This was a painful, twisted position, but slavering in the Dark Lord’s service had taught him to be flexible. “My Lord is merciful.”

“Indeed, I am.” Voldemort smiled liplessly. “Leave me, Severus Alexander, I had no need of your shadows. Your candle is flickering.”

“My Lord is merciful,” he said, and when Voldemort settled back in front of the fire, he hurried up and down the path, running through the nexus, and leaping through the portal. The candle was still burning when he hit the floor. Carefully, he pinched the flame out. The sigil flashed and faded beyond the glass. Voldemort had not clarified whether he wanted Severus report after reporting--he mentally added irony--to Dumbledore. “Fuck.”

 

With most of the castle gone, the bathroom clean, Severus took a walk about the grounds. It was chilly, He rejoiced in the silence, in the silent manicured grounds, the hungry taste of the woods on his tongue. The air was clean. His appetite was aroused. Normally, he would apparate to his flat in Newcastle on the weekends, invite Saoirse over for a meal and a quick fuck, or a tour of the gay clubs in the area--Saoirse was a transexual, he never knew what term to use, but that she considered herself a woman but occasionally a drag queen, playing with gender expectations, and expected him to treat her cock gently. Severus had offered to help pay for whatever surgery she wanted, as a friend and occasional partner, but she had laughed him off. “My body,” she had said, “And I’m getting it my way.” They had been a terrible couple, and had lasted about two weeks of summer domesticity--she was a slob, he was a bastard. But she was the best person to party with, the best person to bitch to, and when they had sex, it was always a blast. He had stopped seeing her after the Dark Lord returned; Voldemort was odd about sex outside what he considered the norm.

Well, Saoirse still went by Iain at this point, stuck in a Catholic Wizarding school in Donegal. Severus wandered over to his spot on the rocks by the Lake and watched the Squid lazily trail a tentacle through its waters. He liked to sail, he was a strong swimmer, used to launch from the boathouse attached to the Slytherin dorms and see how many laps he could manage before the Squid inevitably pushed him back to shore. He pulled out a novel--something Lily recommended, Silas Marner, her lips twitching as she said it reminded her of his future life. He was barely halfway through the intro, a tedious recounting of George Eliot’s life, when he heard someone approaching. He closed the book and began to push himself up.

“Hey, wait!” a terribly familiar voice called: Potter. He drew his wand. “Snape!”

Severus edged away. He could cast a spell to walk on water and hurry away that way, take an impromptu swim back to Slytherin, but then he would get his book wet, and drying charms were always a bother.

“No, please! Please hear me out!” Potter scrambled to him.

Severus pointed his wand straight between his dull hazel eyes. “What do you want, Potter?” he barked.

Potter pressed his lips together awkwardly, and then tried a smile. “I--I just, I’ve been a real bastard to you, Snape.”

Severus stared at him. “Is this some sort of...ploy to regain Lily’s respect?” He stepped one stone closer, wand unwavering.

Potter looked horrified. Nervously, he ran his hand through his hair. When Severus had kept his hair short, briefly as a child, and later, after Hogwarts, it had naturally been a mess, if he didn’t wash and condition it, comb and dry it carefully. On him, it looked sloppy, a sign of ill-breeding. On Potter, it looked charming.

“Well?” Severus said testily. A quick Blasting curse would shove him far back to shore, and a quick Stunning would give him enough time to get away.

“No!” Potter said firmly. “Merlin, no. I seriously fucked up with Lily. I can’t--no. But McGonagall finally--she explained, well. She made me realize I was going too far, I was assuming too much--I was being an asshole, alright? About you being a Dark wizard and all that, since you were a Slytherin. I wouldn’t have--if you’d told me--I didn’t know you were half-Muggle, and I’m sor--”

“Stupefy,” Severus snarled. A flash of red light felled him; Potter crumbled. He dragged him onto more solid earth and walked away. James Potter might have bullied any Light he had had in his schooldays, but he knew his own darkness. He understood it. Stalking back to Slytherin House, he barked the password: “Sanguinis castitas!” In the cool green of the common room, amongst the trappings of pureblood supremacy, he knew he had inherited it from his filthy Muggle father. The last of the Princes, after all, had perished rather than join Voldemort--and some of the Shafiqs had left for Canada, and the Burkes took an extended holiday through the continent for the last of the war. He came by his cruelty naturally, his ill-looks and his poverty. He had been damned by his upbringing, his father’s helpless rage, his mother’s furious tongue. Blood had nothing to do with it. He was his father’s son.

 

Potter sent him guilty looks for weeks afterward, and was scrupulously decent whenever Emmeline partnered them in Defense. Even Black was alright, coldly shunning him in the halls. It was definitely a change from his first youth--he remembered being hunted by the Gryffindor gang, never finding a moment’s peace outside of Slytherin, always walking with his wand ready and a paranoid eye. They had stopped shoving him into toilets after fifth year, at least. Sixth year they had been a bit more discreet, more spellwork and less physical violence--a tripping hex right at the trick stair, so he had nearly fallen three storeys into the Great Hall; ice appearing on the cobblestones during Astronomy lessons at the Tower, as he attached his telescope to the ledge; and, horrendously, a full one-on-four duel after he had sneered something about Bellatrix Lestrange’s sexual habits. He had been in the Hospital Wing for two days afterward--he told Pomfrey he had gotten into a Potions accident. Yes, it was quite a change.

He enjoyed retaking his advanced classes, spending more time with Yatin Bhagat. Yatin commented he seemed much calmer with those Gryffs leaving him alone, to which Severus shrugged. He was beginning to unwind. Mulciber was too busy chasing after Alecto Carrow, Wilkes was in torments over Evan, and Avery was lying low after the Mary incident. For once, he was glad for the teenage drama. All his close acquaintances were too caught up with themselves to bother him. Unfortunately, that left his farther-flung friends--really his only friends, besides Lily, and the ones who had stayed when she had left him--free to owl him, and be sure of a response. The Slytherin grapevine twined at least seven years’ worth of housemates together, regardless of graduation year.

Lucius wrote him mentioning that Yatin said he had become positively graceful. He insinuated it had something to do with losing his virginity, and asked if it had been Atticus Flint’s friend or Wilkes who had taught him how to move. Severus did not respond. Narcissa wrote him more depressingly about Andromeda and the baby she never met, her fears of Slytherin radicalization, and careful inquiries about how his parents were doing. Severus wrote extensively about Rosier’s careful friendliness and Mulciber’s outright intimidation, and did not answer any of her questions. Even Rookwood wrote him, grudgingly, gritting teeth obvious in the lines; Severus was snarky in response, but careful to keep him amused and feeling slightly superior.

More interestingly, Atticus sent him cheerful missives asking him if he and Emmy were having a torrid affair. Severus wrote him pornography in response. Atticus sent him back illustrations. Severus tried purpler prose. Atticus animated his doodles. He kept these letters carefully warded in his trunk. Besides filth, Atticus added in reports from Broderick, who wanted to know why he had all the Death Room Unspeakables in uproar, and an invitation from Dorcas to discuss duelling and spellcraft at the Cat & Kettle next Hogsmeade weekend. Apparently Emmeline had reported his technique was “very concentrated and refined”. Twenty years of duel practice with Death Eaters and Dumbledore would do that.

His mother did not write him. Severus did not care. He did, however, get a garbled package through the Muggle Transit Owl post from his father, in prison stationary--an incomprehensible letter and a battered copy of the Qu’ran. Severus did not want to know. One of the reasons why his grandmother had been so dissatisfied with her daughter’s choice was because Tobias so fervently refused to consider converting to Islam or spending the Eid with her family. His grandfather Prince had converted, why couldn’t his father? But his father had always been a half-assed Marxist: “the opiate of the masses,” he would sneer, and his mother, who had never been religious, would roll her eyes--on a good day. He was a little curious to what his father had done to end up in Strangeways, since that had not happened the first go-around. He was not tempted to write back.

Meetings with Dumbledore continued. Voldemort’s terror had begun around his first year, but didn’t grow deadly until his sixth. There would be an uptick in violence very, very soon, but Severus could not remember the name of the first prominent person disappeared--just that he had assumed Bellatrix had done it. Annoyed, Albus went back to memories of the resurrection.

“You said he used a horcrux?” the Headmaster said, stroking his beard. “Tom has always been a collector…” He sat down with Severus and gave him a list of likely books from Cygnus Black’s library, instructing him to try and get Narcissa to let him in the library. Severus knew that Voldemort had picked the best of Narcissa and Lucius’ library; they had been secretly pleased to regain sole ownership of their books, after the Dark Lord’s demise.

Between researching horcruxes and spinning timelines with the Headmaster, Severus had little time for Lily, who was busy enough on her own. She had become obsessed with Lupin. The two were always together, joking over Potter and Black’s antics, Pettigrew’s insecurities. It was infuriating, but Lupin, suddenly looking sheepish whenever he caught Severus’ eye, knew better to turn the superiority towards him. The two stayed obnoxious. Lily was not painting anymore, and she was sending her doodles to Lupin instead.

One day in late November, Benjy Fenwick waited for him after Defense class. Severus had been discussing rhythmic magic and choreography with Emmeline, who wanted him to focus more on wandless spellcasting. She was talking about Tai Chi and suggesting he talk to Garwin Yu, another seventh year, about elemetal magic when they noticed Benjy staring. She touched his shoulder and smiled him goodbye. He liked that she didn’t act as if she were ashamed of him. Charity, whenever they’d fall together again, always oozed self-hate.

“What, Fenwick?” he demanded crossly, leaving the classroom.

“Can you talk a minute?”

“Can I? Of course. Would I? To you? Why should I?”

Benjy sighed. “It’s about Lily. I’m--Mary and Marlene are a little worried about her, and I was wondering if you would be interested in meeting up with us and possibly strategizing on--”

“Lily’s life is her business,” Severus said shortly. “Her mistakes, her successes. I have no opinion.”

Benjy looked at him incredulously. “You can’t be pleased with how she’s been acting lately. Lupin’s a good guy, but he has a habit of isolating people--look at what he did to Peter, remember how they were first and second year? Before they started hanging with Sirius and James? It was as if nobody else even existed. Even you were more social.” Severus shrugged. He had been too busy trying to gain acknowledgement as human as a half-Muggle in Slytherin House to pay much attention to Gryffindor social dynamics. “Well, are you free now?”

He was. “No,” Severus said.

“What about after dinner? We can all meet in the Defense classroom. Let’s say, around 8?”

“I’m busy.” He wasn’t.

“Don’t you care about her ruining her life?” Benjy said, shocked. “She’s barely talking to Mary now, just entirely wrapped up in Lupin and his gang, taking care of him when he’s sick. It’s ridiculous. Marlene told me she coaches him through his Charms homework. She’s basically doing it for him! It’s disgusting.”

Severus said, voice heavy with irony, “At least she’s not dating Potter.”

Benjy quirked a smile. “What sick world would it be, for that to happen!”

“Indeed,” Severus said flatly, and rubbed his palm.

 

Dinner was boring. Evan was trying to charm the younger Burke girls (fourth year twins) into asserting the necessity to purge the bloodline of impurities, and they kept glancing up at him, nervously worrying at their lips, rather like his own. He was their cousin, somehow, his grandfather’s mother had been a Burke. His relatives mostly avoided him, afraid of his grandparents’ and mother’s temper--their feud was their business, and Tobias, an anti-religious admittedly racist Marxist muggle, was not something that could be rehabilitated at a family dinner party. Khalil Shafiq had never mentioned their relation. In the other plane, his grandmother had invited him to Eid al-Fitr after his trial, once it was clarified that he was a spy and did not kill him own father; he did not attend. He felt no need to further fragment his identity than it already was. It was deadly enough as it were.

Shaking his head to clear away the encroaching bitterness--why had his mother fucked his father?--he piled his plate with beef tips and sauteed vegetables, glancing up at the Gryffindor table. Lupin was there, staring at him. Severus scowled. Lupin looked away. Lily was nowhere to be seen, but Marlene and Mary were sitting at the Ravenclaw table with Benjy and Latisha. Latisha noticed him looking and smirked. Severus raised an eyebrow and began to eat. Yatin slid over and brought up his senior thesis on Charmed potions, specifically mood-enhancers and treating weather-related disorders. He played careful teacher, asking linking questions as they ate, until dessert suddenly flashed onto the table and Yatin, fire in his eyes, abruptly left to test a new hypothesis.

Severus grabbed a plum and left. Avery’s eyes followed him.

“Sure you don’t want an escort?” he called. “The Gryffindors have been quiet lately.” Next to him, Evan smiled benignly. Severus’ mouth set into a thin line, repressing irritation. He would have appreciated the offer in the original plane; but they had not started bringing him into the fold until later in sixth year, after Lucius was officially honored at Beltane, for starting a new Integral Wizarding party, after the Knights of Walpurgis were declared a terrorist group.

“I’m going to the library,” Severus lied, and wandered away. Curiosity brought him to the defense classroom. Instinctively he sat at the professor’s desk and pulled out his a sheet of parchment--he’d be meeting with Atticus and Dorcas next Saturday, and then Flooing over to Narcissa’s apartment in London with Regulus, to catch up and further Dumbledore’s agenda. The Headmaster reckoned that the Dark Lord had gotten his information on horcruxes from Cygnus Black, a mentor who had happily thrown his daughters into the Cause. It seemed like a stretch to him, but this entire situation was a stretch of the imagination, he was a bloody wizard, and magic did not, unfortunately, follow logic. It seemed to delight in violating it: case in point, his existence.

He began to draw a timeline of Lucius’ career, trying to work out when he got the diary. Dumbledore had a theory, but needed to talk to Slughorn first. Severus wished him luck. Sluggy hated dealing with Gryffindors, and didn’t want to slight any of his Slytherins, regardless of what side of the civil war they were on. He made an exception for Lily Evans and her charm, of course, but Severus suspected that was partly to show the Headmaster he wasn’t a racist, and partly some subterranean secret Slughorn himself would never reveal. His favorite working theory was that Lily’s mother was his granddaughter, child of a squib fostered among muggles. It was probably all bullshit, but it made good craic.

“Ah, Snape!” Benjy bounded over. “Good to see you! Mary and Marlene should be here soon, they’re just trying to avoid Black--apparently McGonagall gave them all a lecture on Gryffindor chivalry in the beginning of the year, and it took to heart...what are you writing?”

 

Severus wandlessly and wordlessly casted a drying charm and folded the sheet of parchment, stowing it into his pocket. “My schedule for the upcoming weeks.”

Benjy nervously rolled his wrist. Severus’ eye twitched at the cracking sound. “You’re doing an independent study with the Headmaster, right? Something alchemical?”

“Yes,” Severus said shortly, and leaned back in his chair. Darkly he regarded Benjy: a nice enough guy, brown-haired and dependable, doe-brown eyes. The Death Eaters had eviscerated him, hunting down all the younger members of the Order of the Phoenix. The Dark Lord had thought the best way to cull recruitment would be to kill the recruiters. It had worked.

Voices floated down the hallway. “Fucking Sirius Black,” McKinnon growled, “I hate how he always managed to twist my words! Like fuck did McGonagall say never to let the girls out unattended, I didn’t see him ever looking after the third year girls, and none of this shit when he was still stringing me along--”

“Come on, Marlene,” Mary stepped into the classroom, “for once he means well, even if he’s an arse about it. Egotistical masculinity aside. It isn’t safe to walk around alone.”

“I know. But we’ve got each other, don’t we? And between my wand and your karate, we’ll tear any junior Death Eater apart, limb from limb!”

Mary shivered. “I don’t think we’re enough…” She noticed Benjy and Severus staring. “Hi,” she said flatly. Severus examined her: she looked alright, well-groomed, but a bit drawn, as if she hadn’t been sleeping, and very tense. He didn’t blame her. “Snape.”

Severus straightened in his chair. “McDonald,” he said. He drew breath, unsure on how to proceed. He could feel McKinnon watching him like a hawk. “I’m glad to see you up and about.”

Mary’s brow furrowed. “Yeah?”

Self-consciously, Severus stroked his lower lip, thinking hard on what to say. “Yes. There are few in Slytherin who would have your courage. Zara Shafiq transferred to Durmstrang. So did Basil Fawley.” Zara had actually transferred because of Sirius Black; Basil had left under Mulciber’s harassment. They were all members of the Sacred Twenty-Eight; Voldemort had only exploited an already fractious detente into an explosive civil war.

Mary eyed him. Severus gazed steadily back, keeping his face unguarded. He caught rage, terror, disgust, worry, and finally, grudging acceptance that he was serious. “Mulciber’s trash.”

Severus caught himself from sneering. “Pond scum, you mean. Yes. I live with him.”

“O-kay,” Benjy edged in. “Well, I don’t want to keep you all waiting, I have some revising to do, we can’t all be geniuses like you, Snape.” Snape sneered at the obvious attempt at sarcastic flattery simultaneously with McKinnon. McKinnon thought only Gryffindors could be smart. Mary began to look less wary and more irritated: success. “So here comes the first meeting of the Lily Evans Interventionalist Squad.”

“No,” Severus said. He rose. “Absolutely not, I am not getting involved with anything that takes away her agency and messes around with Potter’s gang.”

Mary sighed. “Benjy, don’t be an arse. It’s not an intervention, it’s…it’s a plan of attack. But yes, thanks for inviting Snape.” She eyed him again. “Lily said you’ve turned your life around. Got kicked out of the house. I didn’t know you were Muggle-raised.”

Severus flushed. “How the fuck--” he restrained himself, “my blood status is of no one’s concern--”

Mary stood her ground. “Don’t be angry with her. Not for that. I was bugging her about you. I didn’t know you were one of us, too.”

“My mother’s a pureblood,” Severus said. “I was always raised knowing about magic. It’s not the same.”

“No, it’s not. But that’s beside the point. We’re here to talk about Lily, not your self-hate.”

Severus flushed. Mary, across the Veil, had a knack for disarming him; he understood why Lily had chosen her for a friend. He regretted the falling out--over hanging out with Potter and Sirius Black, Mary thought it had been horribly hypocritical, they were worse bullies than him--that had removed her good influence on Lily. For a second, he saw an alternate world, the three of them as friends. Then Marlene was saying something mildly apologetically racist, Mary’s expression had turned flat, and Benjy had changed the topic.

“Now, we all think Lupin’s a bit er, right?” Benjy asked.

Marlene folded her arms. “Meaning he’s alternately clingy and condescending, yeah. He’s good for a laugh. But yeah, I don’t like how he’s been treating Lily. I swear she’s spent more time with him in the boys’ dormitory than sleeping in her bed.”

Severus shrugged. “She could be sleeping with him. This would be her first relationship. Young love--cloying and sickening, she’ll tire of it soon enough.”

Benjy was staring at him. “I thought you guys had been together. Since third year, at least”

Severus was taken aback. He was too disgusted by the idea of two sexually active thirteen year olds to even come up with a way to address it. Finally, he said, “Lily would be furious if she knew we were...disccusing--”

“Gossipping about her?” Mary laughed, albeit harshly. “Come on, Lily gives what she gets, she’s a horrible gossip too.” Severus looked at her flatly. He should never had expected that Lily would keep their situation quiet; she could be trusted with an explicit secret, but not much else. “It’s not them having sex or anything like that I’m worried about. It’s just--we haven’t seen her. He’ll wave her over when she’s with us, and immediately she’ll leave. A little guiltily, but she’ll excuse it.”

Marlene made finger-quotes in the air. “‘Oh, you know how Potter’s gang gets, it’ll do Remus some good to talk to somebody else in the House’--as if Potter doesn’t have everyone and the Headmaster eating out of his hand--”

Mary smiled cruelly. “Not McGonagall, though.”

Marlene grinned back. “No, not her. But, anyway--it’s been two months of this, it’s like I’ve lost one of my closest friends. And it’s not like she’s been in the library with you.”

Severus said, “No.” He was starting to understand their worry, but he knew what she was like. She had done this in the other plane: the more things change, the more things stay the same. She had dropped everyone for Potter. “Potter’s little posse is...exclusive.”

Marlene said, “They don’t let Peter make any other friends. They’re always laughing at him when he talks to girls--or guys, for that matter. No wonder he’s such a twitch.” She scowled, lost in her own drama. “But Sirius never lets anyone in, besides James at least…”

Benjy stepped forward. “She’s been doing his homework when he’s sick. I’ve seen her a couple times, in the library, rewriting her notes for it. But she says it’s because he’s been through so much.” Severus snorted audibly. Benjy grinned. “I know, I know. Our Lily’s always been naive. But it’s worrying--what if she gets caught? It’s cheating. And they won’t punish him, he’s a pureblood prefect. But they might take her prefecture away, and she’s the first female Muggleborn to be Gryffindor prefect…”

“Have you talked to her about your concerns?” Severus asked. The three of them eyed each other.

“Well, no…”

“Not precisely…”

“Uh, no, I don’t feel like her blowing up in my face.”

Severus sighed.

 

The conversation, as he had expected, was entirely useless. He let them decide how to approach her, and went back to wandering the halls. Outside a sleet was starting, coating the high windows wet and chilling the stone walls. Severus pulled his cloak around him and walked back to Slytherin. Lily Evans was not his responsibility; she needed to learn how to live her own life. She would have to learn not to sacrifice her friends for love’s obsession. He had learned, with Lucie, with Charity. He had been given the time. He was determined she would have that space to learn as well.

He ran into Dumbledore on his way through the Great Hall. The man was dressed in fiery orange robes, that flickered blue-flame at the edges. They were spangled with red gems, probably not colored glass, Severus thought, the man oozed wealth.

“Ah, Mr. Snape,” Dumbledore smiled genially. “It’s coming close to curfew.”

Severus raised an eyebrow. Surely he was not going to be held to the letter of the law.

Dumbledore laughed at his expression and touched his shoulder gently. Severus restrained a flinch. “Why don’t you join me in my office? It’s a cold night.”

Severus thought about the slow journey to the Slytherin dormitories, rather than his comfortable quarters, and decided to follow him. He missed talking to fully-grown adults.

The gargoyle let them pass--“Mars Bars”--with little comment, only asking about his liver in an undertone as he walked up the spiral staircase. Severus felt worn by inevitability: Lily would date a Marauder, Marlene would die, Benjy would be blown to pieces, and Mary would be left again, to pick up the pieces of her life with harsh humor. Albus directed him to sit in a cushy armchair by the fire. He was beginning to sense a plot. The portraits all around them whispered to themselves. Albus settled in a wingback across from him, and snapped his fingers. An endtable appeared between them, bearing fresh black bread and butter and a bottle of whiskey. Severus frowned at him, suddenly grasped by melacholy: he and the Headmaster used to eat this, plotting out his spyig like this, chatting at the fire. Albus had made his persona, the dark drama and dripping sarcasm, and even helped him pick out his clothes. He closed his eyes.

“How have you been, Severus?” Dumbledore asked.

Severus’ lips twisted. “Dead people keep asking me for advice.” He considered the Headmaster, his aging face lit by the fire. He realized suddenly that this was the only person on two planes who understood his sacrifices and recognized his responsibility. Disturbed, Severus looked away. What did he mean to this Dumbledore, then? A shot in the dark, and a compelling experiment. His eyes slid back to Dumbledore’s face. He was staring at him, eyes gleaming.

“What have you been doing?”

“Trying not to get involved. I’ll be seeing Narcissa next Hogsmeade weekend, with Regulus. I believe Slughorn has already filed the permission slip. We’ll be staying at her London apartment and having dinner with her parents--that should give me enough time to browse through the library, as long as Bellatrix is not there….”

Albus regarded him fondly. “Does Cygnus approve of you, then?”

“He approves of my grandparents enough not to directly slight me. Druella, however,” Severus shrugged.

“Indeed.”

They broke bread and sipped their drinks, discussing the war. Severus felt like an aide-de-camp dining with his commanding officer during a lull in the war, vaguely Napoleonic; it felt good, it felt normal. Dumbledore was being kind to him. He had not believed his apology, but he thought the shock and guilt was genuine. The old lion was dazzled by his own mane, and sometimes it took the consequences in physical form to shock him back into humanity. Severus had long accepted he was the Headmaster’s conscience, as much as Albus was to him. Neither of them could pretend to be noble around the other. Then Severus remembered this Dumbledore had only known him through his memories, for less than three months.

Albus was musing on Severus’ trip to the shadows again: “Six paths, one leading you to the boy--and he could actually see you, notice you before you called his attention? I have never heard of something making more than one horcrux--not even Gellert dared--”

Severus interrupted, “Headmaster? Do you remember who I am?”

“My boy, what do you mean?” Blue eyes widened. “Severus Alexander Snape, Potions Master of--oh. Aha.” He sat up.

Severus cast about for a memory he knew he had not shown this world’s Dumbledore. “Do you remember what I said after my first Potions lesson?”

Dumbledore was still. “Nothing,” he said slowly, “but Minerva caught you with your head in your arms, lying on your desk in your office. She thought it very merry--she said you glared up at her and informed her that you hated everything, yourself most of all, and then grudgingly apologized for ever existing before the age of twenty-one.”

“I never showed you that.”

Albus steepled his hands. “The timelines are meshing. Or at least, I am.”

“And what is your brilliant hunch now?” Severus asked softly.

“I believe I might be dead.”

Severus considered him. “How very irritating.”

 

The Headmaster got up and began to pace around the fire. He explained that he thought that Snape’s trip through the Veil was drawing the planes to intersect. He had died before his scheduled time, and so his sojourn here was meant to balance it back out again. Unfortunately, his death had ripples--whatever Dumbledore’s counterpoint did, it had caused him to die before his moment as well, thus causing his consciousness to follow the same path Snape had blazed out. His journeys back and forth between the worlds had widened the pathway the Veil had already established. He hypothesized that Severus had been meant to save him--hence him waking up here.

“And how did you die, then?” Severus said, standing up. “What happens if we die here?”

“I was destroying Tom’s first horcrux,” Albus said dreamily, searching through his mind. “A ring, among the ruins, like what you saw--”

“Like what I saw in the shadows. Yes.” He did some quick calculating. “Then he made three more, besides the diary and the ring.” He thought of the intertwined paths, the snake, Harry Potter. His eyes widened. “Can a living thing be a horcrux?”

The air tensed. The two stared at each other.

“Not the boy,” Severus whispered. There was a roaring in his ears. “Not Lily’s child. No.” He clutched the back of his armchair. What was the point of it all then? Why had he done this?

Albus poured him a few fingers of whiskey. Instinctively, Severus took it. “You cannot tell me,” the Headmaster said, “that after all this time, you’ve done this just for her memory.”

Severus closed his eyes. He thought about her, thriving and failing in this world, her dreams for revolutionizing wizarding art, the sketch of him cooking dinner in her sketchbook. His mouth twisted, and he sat down. “Always,” he said heavily. “Always. It was her. The one person who cared. One person. All it takes is one person. I couldn’t save her, even though she did so much for me. So now I give my allegiance to the cause she believed in.” He closed his eyes. “I suppose it’s possible—that along the way I started believing in it myself.”

Albus touched his arm gently. “You were never a murderer.”

“But I enabled it, didn’t I?”

“Who have you killed?”

Severus’ shoulders slumped, heavily. Lily, Benjy, Marlene, Evan, Wilkes, Regulus, Barty Crouch. Even Potter, he was culpable for that bastard’s death. “Only those I could not save.”

“You’re alive now.” Albus’ eyes were shining in the fire. “I’m alive now. We have a chance. Meet with me the night you return to Hogwarts. Send a Patronus when you get back.” He stopped. Lily had developed the communication part of the charm.

Severus reached into his pocket and handed him the list of events he had been writing. “I’ve been working on a timeline for the rise of Lucius Malfoy. We might be able to pinpoint when the Dark Lord gave him the diary, if the diary indeed is a horcrux,” Albus nodded, so it was, thanks for never telling him, bastard, “and what we need to do to retrieve it.”

“I’ll do the same.” Albus flexed his wandhand, and rubbed the wrist absently. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, Severus, my Pensieve calls.”

Severus left, feeling hollow and steady all at the same time. Back in the dorms the lads were laughing, playing music--Evan was dancing wildly in the center. When he came in they all started clapping, demanding he join.

“Not tonight, lads, I’m not in the mood.”

“You’re never in the mood,” laughed Avery.

“Come on, Snape,” Mulciber gestured, then gyrated his pelvis. “Show us the way you move.”

Evan grabbed him and spun him around the room. A louder, wilder song started playing, a Ramones ripoff. Why did wizarding music always add a glockenspiel. Wilkes handed him a goblet full of cheap firewhiskey--they were slumming it, nothing so good as Old Ogden’s--and he gulped it. The fire burned in his belly, lightened his step. He let himself have fun; the boys drank and talked shit and laughed about sex and danced, and when Severus woke up he relished first in his quiet mind, and then the memories of a last, careless night.


	11. Slither In, Slither Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a general reminder that Severus isn’t going to respond to things maturely or heathily--he’s got rage issues. He’s not perfect. Neither is Lily. Meant to write more but I’m sick of this chapter. Thanks for all the reviews, they help me write. Been a very rough few months, the encouragement helped, and I’d appreciate it if you could keep it coming.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don’t own anything but my words, and a debt to sayruq and deathdaydungeon on Tumblr for their Snape discourse. There’s a reference to a funny little comic agalemnon did on Tumblr.
> 
> Content Warning: Death Eater discussion of “miscegenation,” rape jokes, general fantastic racism and Severus’ more personal internalized troubles. Discussion of child abuse, sexual harassment--the Slytherin boys deciding to check if Snape was “hung like a Muggle.” Also, I tried my hand briefly at some medieval Latin--that’s why it’s not grammatically correct, for any of you classicists out there. And I have one truly horrible pluperfect auxiliary-ladden mess of a line of dialogue that I refuse to remove because this is fanfiction and I’m impressed that I went to that instinctively in English.

It hit him like the hangover, sputtering hot vomit over a cold toilet in the Slytherin six years’ bathroom, that Lily had told everyone his blood status. Grasping the porcelain edge, he steadied himself, closing his eyes. Potter had been so bloody sympathetic, Mary edging into sympathy--she had told them about his father, he realized dully. He slammed back down on his tailbone: that bitch had told everyone about how fucked up his family was. Not even Dumbledore knew how frothing at the mouth insane his parents were. Bitterly, he spat on the floor, wiped his mouth, and paused. He scourgified the mess and washed his mouth out at the sink. His eyes were bloodshot in the mirror. He looked like his dad, but the nose, the heavy brows, the color of his skin had people giving him second glances when he took the metro and loomed too close to a particularly peachy group of young girls--one of the things he loved about the Wizarding World, he got second looks because he was a dark wizard, not because his grandmother was Middle Eastern. Mary once told him he was like a pantomime villain; how many of them were Gypsy?

He was going to shut her out cold and throw her to the wolf, and when she came to him pregnant and abandoned he would brew the abortifacient and fertility killer himself. Doubtless Lupin was seducing her. Doubtless they would lose themselves in the beauty and rightness of their passion: fucking idiot Gryffindors. Even with Florence, he had the presence of mind to cast a quick spell, and to pull out before.

The door crashed open, and Mulciber stumbled in. “Oh Merlin,” he groaned, “I feel like death.” Avery lurched after him, still in his robes from the night before.

“I feel like I’ve been butt-fucked by a muggle,” Avery announced, and Mulciber made an unpleasant sound as he closed the shower curtain. They heard the water hiss on, and Mulciber released another orca sound of pleasure. Severus turned on the sink faucet and stuck his head under it. “Oh, no offense, Snape.”

“Fuck off, Avery,” he said tightly. He had forgotten the specifics of the anti-miscegenation rhetoric the Dark Lord had spread in the ‘70s--that Muggle penis had a hook like a cat on the end, that Muggle vulva hid molars. He knew Tom Riddle had a sense of humor. He had forgotten it was so Freudian--but the Dark Lord was disgusted by sexual violence and sex in general, and it must have seemed the easiest strategy to dehumanize the other while preventing sexual congress. Being “hung like a Muggle” was not a compliment. Second year the lads had tied him down to check what his looked like. They were fascinated by his foreskin.

He washed quickly and hurried back into the room. Evan was lying prostrate over his covers. “Snape!” he cried. “Tell me you brewed some hair of the dog!”

Severus sighed. “You know those have to be particularly calibrated to the contents of your stomach, the impracticality of developing of particular recipe for each drinker outweighs any benefit to brewing it in advance, drinking is meant to be unpredictable--just drink some soda water and eat some eggs.”

“What’s the point of you?” Evan moaned, and rolled over. I’m not your pet mudblod, Severus sneered internally. Twenty years ago he had a stock of potions developed for his friends’ metabolisms, always overeager to belong. Rage coiled in his stomach and he felt acid climb up his throat. He clenched his fists, gave himself one two three four five and breathe out, fool, Occlude, Occlude. He got dressed. The beard looked awful against his waxen skin. Yellow, yellow, he halfsang to himself, some sort of playground chant, he did not want to remember the rest. He returned to the bathroom and shaved quickly and efficiently, with a charm, like a proper wizard, and the Slytherins boys left for breakfast hushed and greenish and en masse, though he was not quite in step. He followed the unique beat of his hatred and self-disgust.

 

When Lily slid into the seat next to him right before DADA started, grinning brilliantly, Severus closed his book and got up, and moved to a desk against the wall, next to Latisha Randle, who looked to be doing last week’s reading.

She glanced up and rolled her eyes. “You are not getting me involved in your Gryffindor-Slytherin soap opera bullshit. I am pregnant, you are not using me as a human shield.”

Severus grunted. “Just until the holidays. Only a few more weeks. Your baby will be perfectly safe.”

Instinctively she stroked her belly. Hogwarts was very good at accommodating pregnant students; there weren’t enough witches around to risk them harming themselves and their children through a lack of education. Bill Weasley had been born at Hogwarts; so had his mother. Latisha said sarcastically, “What’s the magic word?”

“Avada kedavra.”

Latisha snorted, and returned to her book. Severus returned to his, a weighty medieval Latin text entitled Anima Caeca pars Nefas Superstitione. So far, he wasn’t regretting leaving his dictionary in the dorm. Lily was looking at him, hurt turning into annoyance turning into resentment. He wasn’t regretting that either.

Benjy Fenwick pointedly got up and sat next to Lily, sending him an incredulous look. Severus, barely glancing up from his book, caught a fury about Lupin and the plan and “why are they this immature fucking Slytherins.” Severus was not immature. He was making a point. It was good they thought him immature, it meant his cover was working, that was what he told himself when indulging in acts of petty cruelty against the Potter brat and his friends, who always seemed to explode at the worst times. One would think they would be more cautious around fire--Severus had been burned, he knew what to do.

Emmeline walked in and distributed their exams. She smiled at him as she passed him his paper. He just scowled. He could feel her annoyance as she did her rounds: immature, immature, immature. When was the last time he taught hungover? 1994, 1995, some time around the Triwizard Tournament, the Granger girl had been squealing at him for some Malfoy-Weasley stupidity. He’d made her cry, hadn’t he? Too bad. He scribbled his way through the exam, and was the first to leave. Lily was a close second.

She caught up to him in the hallway. “What the hell is your problem?” she grabbed at his arm. He yanked it back and swept down the halls, leaving her scoffing behind him. He did not break into a dead run, but quickened his step until he reached the dungeons, and then stormed back into the boathouse. He threw his bag to the ground and kicked off his shoes, “Fuck! Fuck!” He felt ill. He leaned against the cool wall and tried to listen to the water lapping on the dock, tried to feel his feet freezing through their socks on the cobblestone, but the anger throbbed through his body. He clenched his hands, unclenched them, breathed. At least he hadn’t shoved her away. He had never found a useful way to calm himself down when he got like this, he always had to wait for it to pass. Vitriol rose in his stomach; carefully, he walked to the water’s edge. Not vitriol: just the remnant’s of last night’s booze. What was he thinking? Immature, immature, immature. He swung his legs over the dock and pulled off his socks, tossing them back towards his boots. He should take better care of his things: a flash of a haunt of a taunt from Sirius Black, laughter, gloating eyes, dangling a textbook over his head. “Oh, what have we got here? This is property of the Half-Blood Prince. A prince, you say?” They had taken his spells. At least Lily hadn’t told them, she never liked them, and especially not Sectumsempra--for enemies. Perhaps in an alternate world they’d have killed him, and he got stuck haunting the Shrieking Shack for all eternity--or until he got closure. He felt sick.

The door coming off the lake creaked open, Severus pulled out his wand. Lily eyed him dubiously and closed the door softly. “I thought you might be here,” she said. “But I checked the Astronomy Tower first, I know you like going there in the day time.” Did he? Perhaps twenty years ago.

Severus did not lower his wand. His eyes narrowed.

“Oh, come off it, Sev. What’ve I done now?”

Rage struck him so violently he started upright, burning his skin. Lily stepped back. He snarled, “Fuck off, Evans.”

Lily bit her lip but did not leave. “One day I’m going to stop chasing after you.”

Severus slammed his hand down. “Let. Me. Be.”

“What are you angry about?”

Severus snarled, felt himself crackling with anger, and held his breath. Occlusion: he closed his eyes and ripped color from the scene. When he opened them even her eyes were gray. He met them emptily. She was starting to look frightened. “I daresay you should know,” he said coldly.

“Did Marlene say anything--”

“You told them. All of them. How many Gryffindors know I’m--poor?” he swallowed.

“Oh, shit.” Lily blanched. “I, uh, I didn’t think you’d be this mad--”

Severus twisted his legs back up to the dock and shifted onto his feet. He loomed over her. “You told Potter, you told Black, you told McKinnon, you even told Benjy Fenwick. Do they know about my father? You’ve never even met the man, I wonder what sort of pleasantries you exaggerated.” He was smiling now, backing her up against the wall. “And my mother? What did you tell them about her? People in the neighborhood aren’t nice. They don’t keep their comments to themselves, not like your mother. Anyway, I pass,” he said, almost conversationally, “at least in winter. Did you tell them the difficulties of a pureblood witch married to a witch-hater? How the mill’s closing?” He had her pressed against the wall. Softly, he said, “And did you explain to them that of course I don’t wash my hair, I never learned how, he just has a tin tub in the kitchen, it’s all his parents’ fault?” Lily’s eyes were wide, but she had not gone for her wand. Severus backed off. She took a deep breathe.

“I--”

“Potter apologized to me,” Severus sneered. “Told me, if he had known--of course I couldn’t be a dark wizard, not a mudblood like me.”

“You’re not a mudblood,” Lily said, “I don’t want--”

“I am a mudblood, Lily, to Bellatrix Lestrange and Walburga Black. The only thing worse than a Muggle is muggle spawn. And you told them--you so violated my trust--”

“I didn’t know,” Lily said quietly, “I didn’t meant to--I thought it would make things better, get them off your back--”

Severus exploded, “Do you know how humiliating it is, for everyone to know your parents fucking hate you? That they hate themselves enough, they can’t be bothered to teach you anything besides ‘yes, sir’ and how to hold a knife? That half of Gryffindor House is out there,” he flourished his wand arm, green sparks flashed out, Lily jerked a nervous smile, “fucking psychoanalyzing my--personality problems and thinking they--”

“I fucked up, Sev,” she said. “I get it.”

“Do you really?” He was panting now. “Do you fucking really? Do you think this is a game? We are at war, Lily! You died in the last go-around! Information is power,” he stepped closer, “everything they know about they will use, did you think this might put me and my family in danger?”

Lily closed her eyes and pushed back her hair with both hands. Clapping them together, she said, “I’m sorry, Severus, and you’re right and I think you’re angry enough that this might not be a productive conversation, you’re just--”

“Shaking you out of your god-given Gryffindor complacency?”

“You’re looking for a fight, and I’ve already lost this one,” Lily agreed. “What do you want me to say? I fucked up. I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry.”

Severus deflated abruptly. “Yes.” It wasn’t okay.

“What do you want me to do, then?” Lily stood up very straight. Severus allowed color to bleed back in, a tinge of green to her eyes, auburn undertones to her hair. She was a riot of color. He looked away.

“Just leave me alone.”

She nodded slowly, closing her eyes as if pained, and left the room. Severus sat against the wall and did not cry.

 

He went through the rest of the week feeling hollow, which was not much of a change from how he normally felt. Lily went back to studying with Mary and Benjy in the library; Severus moved to a separate table with Yatin and Latisha, who was preparing to take time off for the baby. Hogwarts had an in-residency program for young couples; half of Hufflepuff and Gryffindor wouldn’t have made it to graduation, if they hadn’t implemented it. Severus thought this could all be resolved by a comprehensive sexual education class, taught for a quarter of the year, but when he suggested it at a faculty meeting twelve years ago Pomona informed him, if he were so passionate about it, he ought to teach it. He’d rather adopt Harry Potter than teach a bunch of randy teenagers how to use prophylactics.

He thought she was trying to get his attention. He ignored her, occluded her out, and kept working. The Headmaster had developed a timeline of Horcrux creation and deposition, tracing them out as celebrations of particularly important kills and catalysts in the First War. Lucius Malfoy had been promoted to the Inner Circle after his father went to recruit in the Continent, but before Severus’ parents had been killed--sometime in 1977, the coming year. Albus guessed that the Dark Lord had given him the diary as a sign of trust, and wondered what he did to obtain it. Severus remembered hints and smirks of some magnanimous favor, from the occasional Hogsmeade dinner during seventh year, but was not so much in the loop to know back then. He resolved to redouble his efforts to win Narcissa and Lucius over. Lucius had always been a friend and an ally, even as they grew older and the war resumed. He and Narcissa were particular friends; Lucius knew his history but did not have Narcissa’s analytical mind and ability to handle and respond to disagreement. It would be good to have them back; at this point they liked him, were amused by him, but didn’t trust him as an equal. That was a reason, why he always enjoyed them; they had always viewed him as an equal, intellectually at least. Now it was time to regain their equal respect. He was looking forward to Hogsmeade, and his anger towards Lily had nothing to do with it.

Working late over the Pensieve Thursday evening, the Headmaster called for tea. Severus sat very still in his armchair by the fire, eyes closed, trying to resort his memories. It was becoming more and more difficult to disentangle himself from everyday adolescent life and remember where he came from, and frequent trips into the pensieve were disorienting him. His head throbbed. Albus was pacing; they were going over a memory of Tom Riddle applying for the Defense Against the Dark Arts position. Parallels, parallels: was this why Albus had always been so rude to him? Did he fear another half-blood with father issues going to the bad? Severus rubbed his forehead. He couldn’t think coherently.

“He’d been working at Borgin and Burke’s,” Albus muttered to himself, pacing in front of the fire. “Why the sudden change of heart? No, he had left for the continent, suddenly, even though we all expected him at the Ministry, and truly it would’ve suited his political purposes better--”

Severus had a brief flash of the Dark Lord, in the first war, snarling about ministry incompetence to an appreciative crowd of lower class muddy-blooded recruits. Tom Riddle always had an anarchist streak; there was no way he would have risked becoming a ministry stooge.

“--but what drove him away from the shop? What made him change his mind?”

Severus opened his eyes gingerly. The fire was still too bright. Carefully, he turned away from it. “He was working in magical antiquities, wasn’t he? And your memories of him as a boy, he liked trophies, symbols of the past, of him changing. Perhaps he stole something? Something that reminded him of the diary…”

Albus stopped. “The diary meant to release Slytherin’s monster.” A slow smile spread across his aged face, brightened his wrinkles. Severus wondered what he looked like when he was his age--36, 16. “My boy--”

“I’m not your boy--” Severus snapped on instinct, then flushed. It sounded more petulant coming from a teenager.

Albus twinkled at him. Severus scowled. The Headmaster went on,“Severus, then, you do your house proud. You have some Burke cousins, don’t you? Slytherin twins? Perhaps it’s time for you to reconnect with your family, find out if anything of Slytherin lore went missing from the shop in the late Forties...”

Severus groaned. “You ask this of me as if it were easy. The Burke girls are a good two years younger than me, and I caught Rosier warning them off from associating with their ‘miscegenated’ cousins. We all knew the Dark Lord was Slytherin’s heir, through the Gaunt bloodline, Slytherin House has known that since the Fifties--”

“How?” Dumbledore pressed. “How do you, a penniless orphan, convince a house of blood supremacists you are its heir?”

 

“Parseltongue? Speaking Slytherin’s bloodline talent seems a deciding factor. Or there are other Parseltongues running about the United Kingdom that I have not yet tangled with.” Severus frowned. “But that would not be enough. Smita Patil is a Parseltongue, though of a different dialect….”

“There are dialects in Parseltongue?”

“So Smita Patil told me.”

Dumbledore stroked his beard. “So if the language is not enough to prove the blood, then what is? A trinket, some sort of sign--but he would have had to have had it before he graduated, but before he opened the Chamber.” He glanced back at the Pensieve. “And perhaps he left it here--or one of them here--and used that as lodestone for the DA curse…”

Severus sat up suddenly, aching head forgotten. “You don’t think he made multiple? More than two?”

Dumbledore regarded him seriously. “My boy, if my guess is correct--and I daresay my guesses are often right--”

“Yes, yes, you’re a bloody genius--”

“Thank you, Severus.” He smiled brilliantly. Severus groaned again and hid his aching eyes. “But,” Albus grew solemn again, “if my guess is correct, we might be dealing with at least three. The diary, the man himself, a trinket of Slytherin’s…”

Severus slouched in his chair, scowling. “Why not the mouth organ?” he said bitingly. “If we’re thinking of seminal moments…” He smirked. The Dark Lord, entrusting a piece of his soul to a tattered tin harmonica? “Why don’t you ask Horace?” he said instead, sitting back up in the chair. He was growing too relaxed, too reactive, the teenager in him was taking over. Albus had never been his father, he had never been his boy--remember the Prank. “They had been close, hadn’t they? He would know. He has always kept a good eye on the House, and the mood of the House. As much as he is able.”

Albus stared at him. “Oh dear. Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Because you are entirely too convinced of your own cleverness.” And know absolutely nothing about Slytherin, Slytherin politics, and Slytherin friendship.

Albus cocked an eyebrow. Severus refused to flush. He was not being a hypocrite. Albus continued, “Alas, Professor Slughorn and I have never been on the best of terms, and the ‘70s were a low point in our working relationship.” Severus felt his hackles raise. Of course it would have been a low point, favoring those marauding bullies over Hogwarts’ most vulnerable would put a damper on what was once a warm, exciting alchemical partnership--and perhaps more, Slughorn had only winked and let the matter rest, back in those hard days in the early ‘80s, training to become full professor and housemaster. “You’re one of his quiet favorites, Severus. Why don’t you ask him if he knows anything about horcruxes?”

“Do you honestly think it would be a good idea for a halfblood son of a pureblood witch and muggle father, just like the Dark Lord, with a difficult family life, just like the Dark Lord, to go ask Horace Slughorn if he knows anything about one of the most degrading forms of dark magic? A halfblood known to be enamoured with dark magic?”

Dumbledore regarded him. “Are you enamoured of dark magic, Severus?”

Severus snarled, “No. Only when it suits me. I have my addictions well managed.” He lurched up and regretted it, as his head gave a splitting warning. Scowling, he stalked to the gargoyle. “May I leave now?” He hurried down the staircase, robes abillowing, without waiting for more of an answer than the Headmaster’s light laughter.

 

Severus ran into Yatin Bhagat while returning to the Slytherin common room. Yatin stopped him and led him to their favorite couch by the upperclassman fire, regaling him with a disastrous brewing tale. Apparently he had forgotten the fifth widdershins stir for Forget-Me-Not potion, and made a highly volatile truth-telling potion that went erupting out of the cauldron instead. Luckily, no one got drenched--Yatin was quick with shield charms. Severus asked for a sample, thinking he might as well try to slip it to Slughorn, though it wouldn’t have the same compulsive power as Veritaserum. Yatin promised him three test tubes and hastily ran off to retrieve them. 

When he finally got back to the room, triumphant in his truth serum, Mulciber and Wilkes were gone, but Avery and Rosier were boredly stacking a tower of Exploding Snap cards on top of Wilkes’ precarious stack of herbology notes. Severus raised an eyebrow. “You know he’ll be furious if you burn his precious notes,” he said as he stepped through the doorway, throwing his bag and outer robe onto his bed. Avery and Rosier glared at him simultaneously, Avery cupping his hands around the tower carefully.

“Careful,” he warned. “Or else we’ll burn Wilkes’ notes.”

Severus snorted. He walked over to the fire and stretched in his tunic and leggings, warming himself and shaking off the chill of his responsibilities. It was becoming too easy to respond to them, his old friends, the old band of Slytherin brothers. In four years, Rosier would be dead, suicide-by-auror, Wilkes as well, Avery in prison, Mulciber too. Out of the men in his year, he was the only one to survive relatively unscathed. He’d visited them in prison, of course, when he could, when he could stand it, carefully occluded, sneaking in bits of chocolate and news, advice on how to clear one’s mind--one of the reasons why the Dark Lord had been convinced he was on his side, all along. Avery had spoken for him, Mulciber too. Evil bastards. He sighed and flopped onto his bed, to his friends’ outrage, and closed his curtains. Moodily he rested his head on his pillow. What was he going to do now? How was he going to approach Horace?

His hand shuffled under his pillow and found a folded piece of parchment. His brow furrowed, and carefully he pulled it out. It was sealed closed with green wax, stinking slightly of tea tree oil, marked with a lily. He sat back abruptly on his heels, mind blank. Fear rushed in, then fury, and then the gray suspension of Occlumency. Sharply he bit out, “Reveal your secrets,” and the gray plume of a Notice-Me-Not charm sparkled out of the parchment. He sighed and opened the letter.

“Sev--

“Haven’t been able to catch you for weeks now, but I know why you’re avoiding me. Please don’t. I miss you. You’re probably wondering how I snuck this letter into your bed, and no, it wasn’t through bribing a Slytherin--I have enough sense to know that’ll blow up in my face. No, I did something infinitely Gryffindorish, for ‘la gloire’. Prepare to admire my kleos. I snuck in. Better yet. I fucked over Potter while doing it. I wish I could see your face right now, I bet you’re trying so hard to keep it blank but a smile’s there at the corners of your mouth, I’m telling you!”

Indeed, there was a crooked smile tugging gently at the left corner of his mouth, and at an enclosed sketch of him trying not to smile, in pastel and very careful ink, he let it develop into a full grin. He shook his head, combed his fingers through his hair. It wouldn’t do, softening.

“Was the drawing accurate? It better be, I spent a full day on that, and you know how hard it is to find time to be alone and work, Mary’s been clingy lately and Marlene’s just disappeared to the Quidditch pitch. And I like Remus, but lately he’s in all my favorite spots in the library, Peter dogging his heels, it’s a little irritating. I haven’t had space to work.

“Anyway. Let me tell you my glory. I know how you hold a grudge, so I realized after four days of you shunning me that I’d have to come up with something great to get your attention back. You ignored my flaming origami dragon in Defense, and my dancing china kittens in Charms. When I tried to slip a cute little comic from your hell of a past life--what if you, me, and James had a baby together? I bet you it’d have your personality. see enclosed--into your pocket after Transfig yesterday, you positively stormed away from me. Nice billowing, by the way. Would look good in watercolors, if I did watercolors in monochrome. I was pretty annoyed, and pretty upset too. You know you’re my closest friend, Sev, and it’s been lonely without you. And since you made such a dramatic showing, other people have been picking up on it. Please tell Latisha Randle to stop telling people I got you pregnant and want you to get a back-alley abortion, please. Are there potions for that? For any of that? No one believes her, but Sirius Black thinks it’s funny, so Peter won’t stop making jokes about it.

“But people includes Potter. I know you think he doesn’t count, but occasionally he has flashes of humanity. This was one of them. He swaggered up to me and asked, ‘You alright, Evans?’ I told him to fuck off and stormed off--less billowing, how do you do it, is it some sort of Hover Charm?--and cooled my heels at the Astronomy Tower. Except Potter followed me. So I shouted at him a bit for blabbing, he reminded me it was my fault to begin with, I cried, he cried because he always cries when other people cry--and they call you, O Emotionless Troglodyte, the snivelling one--I shouted at him some more, and told him I ruined everything and you hated all of us. Which you do. When do you not hate everything?

“But you see, Potter feels guilty. And through my puffy eyes and tear-stained lashes, I saw his guilty face and realized I could use this. You said he tried to apologize to you? Well, now he’s trying to make it up to you. Atonement. We brainstormed ways of getting you to talk to me. Fake-dating was not an option. He doesn’t like me anymore, by the way, not like that. McGonagall snapped him out of it, and he says he was doing it to fuck with you. Nice guy. But, anyway, we were thinking, and I said you’d flip your shit if I tried to force something public, and trying to corner you alone would probably just get me hexed on instinct and Defense class proved that you’re much better on the uptake than I am. Might be those twenty extra years of experience, no? So I realized I needed to get a note to you, in some sort of impressive fashion. We dismissed owls as too obvious, and obviously trying to slip it to you during class or in the halls wasn’t working. Bribing classmates would have been too tricky--I won’t deal with Avery or Mulciber, Rosier pretends I don’t exist, and Wilkes tried to transfigure my hair into minnows last month? And one does not just approach the monolithic Slytherin bloc of girls. And I know you hate Barty Crouch. And Regulus would just try to use it as a way to screw Sirius. And Latisha enjoys my pain--seriously, why does she hate me? And Benjy makes you twitch.

“But then I remembered that you’ve been studying with Yatin Bhagat lately. So I skipped down to the dungeons, Potter in tow as a hex-shield, and walked into the upperclassmen experimental laboratory just as Yatin fucked up and forget the fifth widdershins stir in Forget-Me-Not potion. And you know what that makes! So, bam, quasi-Veritaserum to the face for Potter--he makes a great human shield. Did you know he’s a stag animagus, that Lupin has a crush on me, that he thinks he’s gay or just a little bisexual, that he’s in love with Sirius Black, and that he owns an Invisibility Cloak? Old family heirloom. He also blabbed our mission to Yatin, who in between apologizing and scolding us for walking into a lab without knocking, decided to collaborate. He said he wouldn’t give you a note, he doesn’t like conflict and personal issues, but that he’d let me in and out the Slytherin dorms, as long as I was quick about it.

“So, Invisibility Cloak, Veritaserum, myself and Potter humiliated, and breaking and entering--here’s the note. I have a secret place to show you, and things to say to you. Or we don’t have to talk about it at all. But I found something that I want to share with you. Please meet me at the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy--you know, the one of him teaching trolls ballet--on the seventh floor, Friday afternoon, 2 o’clock would be great. Everyone else will be at the Quidditch game, it should be easy enough to slip away. Walk across it three times thinking ‘I just need a place to hide away’.

“Please come, Sev. I miss you. Let’s not let this ruin everything. I hope the sketch didn’t piss you off, and I made you laugh.

“Lots of love,  
“Lily”

He stared down at the sketch. The child Lily imagined looked nothing like Harry Potter, for all it greatly resembled James. The boy had not inherited his father’s broad shoulders, for one thing, for all he had his arrogance and disregard of the rules. He carefully folded the letter, art and all, and slid it back under his pillow. He eased onto his back and stared up at the green velvet canopy of his four-poster bed. He must have just missed her.

He shot right back up--a family heirloom, he knew the Potter brat got into far more trouble than he could catch him at, when he heard that heavy breathing with the fake Moody, that must have been him, Moody’s mad eye could see through invisibility cloaks! Then he paused--James Potter was in love with Sirius Black? A shame, then, that Sirius Black only loved himself--but that meant Wilkes was right about them. He had won five galleons off of him, the other time around, betting that James would end up blackmailing Lily Evans into dating him. They had never found out the blackmail but assumed that it was the reason why she suddenly started dating him, April of 1978, after almost seven years of publicly declaring her hatred. Well, at least the alternate universe meant he didn’t have to pay up, which was good, because he wasn’t sure he could spare five galleons. Being a teaching assistant for Slughorn didn’t pay that much. He closed his eyes: Slughorn, Lily, the truth serum--he could see how he could finagle the Horcrux information from him, and by Monday night. He let his face fall into a smirk: take that, Dumbledore, Gryffindor superiority. A Slytherin always knew to use their tools.


	12. Death, Doom, Destruction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: Being rude to me online will not make me want to write. You are not entitled to anyone’s labor.  
> Disclaimer: Nope, don’t own this. But plagiarize me and I will make your life difficult. All the weird shit about angels and hours come from an internet magic hour table of King Solomon’s and Wikipedia.  
> Content Warning: Death Eaters, so killing of innocent animals, rape jokes, discussion of sexual assault by a self-proclaimed regretful ghost of a rapist, gore, violent dark magic ritual and animal sacrifice. Mentions of police brutality. The Latin is supposed to be bad. Jokes about racism and white guilt.

He woke up to a dull rain hitting the window wall of the Slytherin six years’ dormitory, gray light and low breathing. Severus stirred, moved to his side, sighed. He still held Lily’s letter in his hand. He had a nightmare, hadn’t he, one of those unpleasantly psychologically revealing ones, a by-product of Occlumency. Know thyself: he had been looming over a very satisfied, very old-looking Albus, who had been leering at him over his half-moon spectacles, legs akimbo under his purple robe (with dancing crimson arabesques, the flash of detail made him roll his eyes). Oddly sexual, he was half-hard. He sneered and strode quickly to the shower, waving a studying Evan good-morning. Contrary to popular belief, he had never been into power imbalances; he’d never slept with Lucius Malfoy, to his mild regret, or Narcissa either, who was more obvious and less humiliating in her flirtation. Now, the both of them, at the same time, that had been a wank fantasy in his late teens, hadn’t it? When did they start dating? Early 1977, it was November now, soon enough. Under the cool water, he rolled his neck, feeling lively. He hadn’t mourned this Halloween, had spent it drunk with the Slytherin lads and ignoring Lily Evans--not that much of a change from the first go-around, to be honest.

Evan and Avery were waiting for him when he got out of the shower, towelling himself dry. Naked, he sneered at them. “I do not have delusions over the potency of my pheromones, Avery, why are you here? I know you’d jump anything that moves, but, truly, you ought to ask first.” Avery raised an apologetic hand, Evan was stifling giggles. Severus shook his heavy wet hair at them. “Regardless of whatever inanity you want--can’t it wait until I’m fucking dressed?” He snapped his towel at them, baring his body. The boys jumped back, Avery looking a little embarrassed, Evan laughing. “Get out!” he hissed, and the boys retreated to the sinks. Severus wrapped the towel around his waist, exasperated and already irritated. Purebloods had no sense of privacy. They were all growing too comfortable with each other’s bodies. He would not let this lead to the indignity of an invitation to one of Mulciber’s orgies, not again, never again.

He lotioned quickly and lathered his face, preparing to shave. He had shaved the beard, let it grow back, it was time to shave again, feel the slap of November wind (and rain) wake him up to the greater game again. He stared at himself in the mirror, bruises from bad dreams under his eyes. The monochrome lighting of the bathroom always made him look yellow-green. He sneered again, and shaved. He used his grandfather Snape’s razor, stowed away for him by his father--the one nice thing Tobias ever did. The sensation of a blade on bare skin calmed him in the morning. It established the stakes. He only self-harmed emotionally anyway, so Lucie Rosier once told him, when it was becoming more and more clear she was going to break off the engagement. Funny: he washed off the razor and checked his face for missing bits. He hadn’t thought of Lucie in a long time, Charity and then Sturgis had long overshadowed her. How old would she be now, like what, twelve? Merlin, the woman he nearly married--as he told Tom Riddle, he found a “better, purer” woman--was only twelve years old, mastering Mandrakes at a Beauxbatons lycee. He ran his fingers through his hair, pushing it out of his face. The morning routine was establishing who he was--scattered across time, inappropriately old, inappropriately young.

When he walked back into the room, still towel-clad, Evan and Avery were sitting very innocently at the foot of their beds, dressed in outdoorsmen’s robes--oil cloth outer robes, and a leather jerkin and deerskin hose with dragonhide boots. For once Avery was without his new simare, trimmed in polarbear fur, which his mother had procured for him, for the winter season. Instead, he wore an archer’s half cloak, bow and arrows with him. Evan had a wicked iron sickle with a pewter handle at his side. On his bed, though, they had stretched out clothes, new ones, his size: a nice oilcloth simare with pockets, that might just pass in the Muggle world, a beautiful red linen shirt with silver embroidery, a plain leather jerkin, and new hose. They had not bothered to replace his boots; he was planning on wearing his Doc Martins to tatters, and actually had.

“A bribe,” he said neutrally. “You want me to harvest potions ingredients for you.” It goes without saying, that something would be illegal and carry a prison sentence.

Avery crossed his legs. “And you look good in red. Now, hurry up and get dressed, your hair’s dripping, you’ll catch a cold that way.”

Severus snorted and cast a quick drying charm, which left his hair oily as always. He ignored Evan’s sigh and dressed quickly, enjoying the feel of new linen on his skin. “I like the embroidery. Fleur-de-lis, Evan, was this your elf’s work?”

“Yes, she likes your taste. I kept her from enchanting anything, I know you like to do that yourself. Anyway, Snape, can you hurry up? It’s most effective if we can hunt it before the Neron hour.”

Severus adjusted his jerkin and stepped into his boots. “Ah, Qaphsiel’s hour. Before the ruler of heaven returns. He who presides over the death of kings. Avoiding ill-fortune for men in power. What are we hunting, then, in Haniel’s hour? Joy and pleasure, that could result in the death of kings…” He grabbed his leather roll of knives and tucked it into his simarre’s inside pocket.

Avery stood up. “We’ll tell you when we’re in the Forest.” Severus swept out of the room, robes billowing, Evan and Avery at his footsteps. They took the blood exit, accessible across an invisible suspended platform behind a mossy wall by the Slytherin common room, which demanded a drop of kneazle blood for egress. Carefully stepping through the darkness, they entered the glass tunnel under the Lake, and followed it into an ephemeral pond in the Forbidden Forest. The exit was only accessible between Samhain and Yule. In 1987, a group of interhouse explorers accidentally destroyed it. They were attempting to reconstruct the charms Slytherin used to build the tunnel in the first place, particularly the one to detect and neutralize ill-will, and ended up breaking half of them, thinking the blood-based seals were dark magic and had to be erased. The runes for sanctity and security pulsed along with the tide, illuminated the purple-turquoise patina of the ancient, thinning glass.

The forest was still and cold when they came up out of the pond, perfectly dry. Evan whispered a warming charm. Avery handed him a leather string, embossed green runes for stillness and quiet shifting, and he quickly tied his hair back.

“What are we hunting?” Severus said quietly, wand in one hand.

Evan took a plain sheathed knife from his robe pocket and handed it to Severus. Severus drew it--obsidian. Startled, he caught Evan’s serious face on the blade. “Unicorn foal,” Evan said quietly. “As a favor to Avery’s father.”

Racing thoughts, nausea rising up burning acid in the throat: he remembered Draco Malfoy shaken and green in his office, curled in on himself, stammering about an inky shadow drinking from the very neck of the animal, silver down cracked lips and sunken corpse-skin, flayed skin peeling and disintegrating blackened onto the mercury beast, mad red eyes roiling in overlarge sockets. He gleaned the rest from the boy’s eyes. Unicorn blood prolonged the beat of the heart, the respiration of the lungs, oxygen cycled up to the brain, but at the cost of deadening feeling, physical and physiological. The eyes, carefully pickled, gave the eater the ability to see malcontent, at the cost of color vision. Looking through the lens let one see the imprint magic had on the body. Unicorn flesh, particularly foal flesh, properly filleted, remolded the body and added muscle, recushioning cartilage and reducing arthritis. The bones, ground down, deaged the flesh temporarily but worsened intestinal decay. Severus rubbed his hands, thumb against his fingers, checking their motion, their pliability. Dark magic melted the body down, reducing the outline between “I” and “Thou,” the world and its simmering pools of curiosity, of shadow, of unpredictability. Dark wizards always looked blunted, like the edge of a wax taper melted and solid against the grain of a hard table.

“If he’s having problems with inflammation in his joints,” Severus said steadily, sliding the given knife into his belt, “I could brew him something less...controversial than flesh. An analgesic, with feverfew and thestrel sinew--”

“It’s not for him,” Evan interrupted, but was quelled by a warning look from Avery.

“It’s a favor for my father,” Avery said steadily. “Snape, you’ve been talking for ages how you’ve been wanting to explore more difficult butcheries. And unicorns are what, a quadruple-X non-tradeable good? You wouldn’t get this opportunity until you’re three years into your apprenticeship, if you can get an apprenticeship.”

Severus brushed his thumb over his lip, holding back a reckless word: arrange your face, arraign your fate, follow your fate. For the Dark Lord, he thought, for Lily and spying and Horcrux-hunting. “If we’re caught, it means Azkaban.”

Evan laughed. “That’s why we brought you. We’ll never get caught.”

When Severus had been in auror custody, pending trial, for a crime so little as being a queer working-class Slytherin, Avery had bailed him out, tracked him down with Lucius Malfoy from Mulciber’s reports and Slughorn’s last sighting, behind the counter at Slug & Jigger’s Apothecary. He had been at work one day, a job he got on Lucius Malfoy’s gentle suggestion to Slughorn, and stayed late, to talk politics with the other apprentices. Mulciber had picked him up, and they had gone to a house party at Knockturn Alley. He had woken up hungover in his Diurn Alley flat, to the aurors slamming his door down. His father had been killed during the night, with one of his recently-patented spells: sectumsempra, sever forever Severus, sever us. An associate of the Order of the Phoenix had recognized it, made the link--Lily, he guessed. The aurors could interrogate him for up to 24 hours, before releasing him to trial. Alice Longbottom worked him over for 4 hours, then John Dawlish, playing nice auror. Then Savage, then Proudfoot, and back to Longbottom again. It wasn’t worse than being beaten up by the Marauders, no, just as humiliating as that, but it was worse than being beaten by his father, and he had promised himself no one would grind his face into a toilet ever again, he had promised no one would kick him so hard he’d vomit, he had promised he would never, ever spit out a tooth and blood in his attacker’s face, snarling, “I don’t have the information you want, I was at fucking Mulciber’s in fucking Knockturn Alley, trying to fuck Mulciber if you really must know, no I’m not a fucking murderer no I’m not a fucking Death Eater, not yet at least--fuck--” 

 

Dawlish, with a flick of his wand, slammed his face into the desk, crack, made him apologize for his filthy language in front of the lady, being a filthy Death Eater wannabe. Well, it certainly made him want to be. Twelve hours: Slughorn had dropped by the shop for his lunch hour, to ask him about a master’s program in New York, saw he wasn’t there, heard that no one knew where he was, contacted Lucius, who contacted Mulciber, who contacted Avery. Lucius gave Avery the money, but Avery bailed him out. And Evan Rosier cleaned him up. They let him arrange the funeral by himself, which was a mistake, because then Lily Evans showed up to apologize, and that was all a mistake.

“No,” Severus said. “I wouldn’t’ve let that happen.” Avery touched his arm, pointed to the gentlest of tracks in the forest mud, the glimmer of a strand of spider-webbed hair in a pine. He picked it up and held it before Snape’s eyes.

Steathily the boys padded across the forest floor; Professor Kettleburn had brought the Creature Care NEWT students into the forest to see the unicorns, and Evan’s friend Walden (later the great Executioner, that arsehole) had been tracking the offseason litter of foals for two weeks now. They were following the trail of the weaker one. Severus removed the hair from bushes and branches and dead forest leaves and placed them in a test tube; not as potent as a full-grown horse, still the foal’s hair would provide a certain drunkenness for a weaker Felix Felicis, that relied less on circumstance and more on native gumption.

The boys followed the prints through the muck of the forest. The sun throbbed dully above them, veiled by a thin blanket of cloud. The occasional augurey cried; it would rain, yet again, later today. Who would’ve thought it would rain in Scotland? Severus fervently hoped they would find the foal before the rain set in, but during Neron’s hour--or 9 am, the hour that defeated kings and would hopefully bring out the worst of the dark aftershocks of the slaughter unto the consumer. Avery suddenly stopped and motioned for them to hide; they dodged behind trees. Avery notched an arrow into his bow.

A mist crept behind them, rolling off the Lake, gradually supplanting the trees and shaping around their clothing. Avery stayed upright, bow ready.

Evan shivered violently. “I can barely see a thing,” he murmured. “I hope--”

Avery hushed him. Evan attempted to catch Severus’ eye, but Severus stayed looking straight ahead as the mist overtook them. When they could hardly see five feet ahead of them, Avery relaxed.

“To the cairn,” he whispered, and again they crept forward, sloping downhill now, through thicker layers of leaf litter, less sticky and older now, but slippery. Severus had to catch Evan twice, but Avery stayed surefooted--his boots must have been charmed, a gift from his father, as surely as all their outfits and tools were. The woods smelled hungry and sharp. Severus was glad of his knife, no matter its Death Eater source.

Carefully they sloped downhill, digging their heels into the turf, down into the little valley of the Baron’s cairn. When they reached the bottom, Avery held a hand out, to stop them from going closer. Again, Severus had to grab Evan before he fell over, and slapped a Silencio over him. They stepped closer, one silent creep across the leaves, another. An augury shrieked--rain was coming, no shit, Severus thought, with this humidity. The cairn morphed into view, a spindly tower of shale, from a distant coast, topped with a dull marble carving of a blank-eyed barbarian knight. Avery withdrew an arrow and notched his bow, and Evan put a hand on his sickle. Severus withdrew, standing behind the cairn.

The mist thickened suddenly, going from gray to a warm gold. Severus closed his eyes, heart pained, and kneeled, gripping his chest. The foal was approaching. He stayed down, resting his head against the cool crumbling stone of the tomb, as a quick arrow whistled past, then another one, and another, the unmistakable crack of skull being smashed, of a sickle opening the flesh.

“Snape, hurry!” Rosier snapped. “To me! A vial!”

They bled the foal quickly and shaved her fur, skinned her and gutted her, and finally carved her flesh and stuffed her into Evan’s and Avery’s moleskin packs. Severus would help them process the ingredients further, in the bathroom most likely. The boys loped off, victorious, but Severus said he would stay behind, to cover their tracks. Entitled as they were, they saw nothing wrong with this; of course he would risk being found at the scene of the crime, to cover for them. Evan and Avery could say they had just found him with the stuff, they were taking it off to report to Slughorn, and for a percent of all his future earnings Slughorn would keep him from Azkaban and pack him off to Durmstrang. To them, it made perfect sense. They had bought his clothes, after all.

“Tergeo,” Severus snapped. The bits of blood and gristle on his clothes and decorating the cairn disappeared. He blinked rapidly, clutching his knife in his other hand, and finally expelled a long, tugging breath. His shoulders relaxed. He sheathed his knife. The mist crept on, and a chill rose up. His eyes narrowed: nothing physical, probably a ghost, but there was a risk of a demiguise or a lethifold. He said, “Expecto patronam.”

The doe shivered out of his wand and padded about the rock pillar tomb, craning her neck to flick her ears back at him. He almost laughed; no lethifold then, and definitely no dementors. His doe sniffed around, snuffled, squinted back at him, ears flat back, shook her head, and stepped back to him. Around the tomb it was growing darker, with a phosphorescence emerging from the top. It pooled gooily down the rocks into a human shape. The doe snuffled. Severus put his hand instinctively towards her back, but remembered she wasn’t solid. Her aura curled around his hand regardless. The humanoid flowed into a recognizable visage.

“Salve, dux,” Severus tried to remember his Latin. “Discupulus sum Hogwartium.” Lucie Rosier had told him the Catholic formula for exorcism, how had it gone? I reject the dragon. And in Arabic, hadn’t his mother told him it was the Ayatul Kursi to say? But that was explicitly praise for Allah, why hadn’t he ever bothered to look up how to banish a ghost? Besides, it had been a year and also twenty-one years since he had flipped through a Qu’ran: Merlin. He retreated to Latin.“Culpa non a me, er, hac culpa te vi-videre non mea sunt.”

“I know your English,” the Bloody Baron said drily. “But a noble effort.”

So much for showing off. He blinked. He had known for years that the Baron spoke English with a strange Received Pronunciation. He was acclimatizing. This was ridiculous.

The Baron swept over his cairn and loomed over Severus. “More blood has been spilled over my tomb,” he boomed, rattling his chains, “innocent blood stains the grass where innocent blood had stained! Speak, student, and answer: what have you killed?”

Severus stared back steadily. After wandering through the space between streams of time, ectoplasm didn’t frighten him. “My mates and I went hunting. Our quest was successful.”

The Baron floated to face him, leaned in to stare into his eyes. Severus flinched back. Whoever the Baron had been, he had been stocky, with a face like a hatchet, and thick dark hair--rather like his father, actually. Snape glared back. Voldemort had long since tortured out that Pavlovian response, having Rowle and Macnair sneak up on him, and after two years working with Moody, he thought he had ironed it out. But the mind couldn’t entirely conquer matter; sometimes the body controlled the mind.

“What do you seek, by your sacrifice?” The Baron gesticulated. “Blood has been spilled at my tomb, the tomb of Helena Ravenclaw--unmarred blood of uniform virginity, witch and unicorn. What questions do you seek answered?”

Severus was confused, and it came out as frustrated. He scowled. “Our quest was successful. We left with what we sought.”

“But you remain.” The Baron leaned into him, dousing him with the chill of death. Severus began shivering; he felt like the Baron had grabbed his heart. “What do you seek?”

Severus was shaking. “You-you say Helena Ravenclaw was killed here?”

“Yes,” the Baron leaned back, folding his arms. Warmth came rushing back, leaving only a hollow sense behind. “I killed her!” The Baron threw back his head. “I, she refused me and I pursued, I took her and I killed her for the insult--the insult to my honor and to her mother’s honor, and in her dying breath she cursed me, she cursed this place, she cursed the diadem that had brought me there--and I took her body and killed her spirit here, upon the rocks, and buried her. But the diadem that was lost, you seek it?”

He really didn’t have much interest in Founders’ lore. That was more the Dark Lord’s hobby, and he did not suffer rivals--so now he was interested. “For what blood has been spilled blood will answer.” Snape folded his arms.

“Did Helena send you?” The Baron leaned forward. “Has she repented of her foolishness?”

Snape raised an eyebrow. The Baron was beginning to remind him of Mulciber after Alecto broke him with him in fourth year. Similar to the Baron, Mulciber had lashed out violently at her--blasted her off the Quidditch pitch, temporarily paralyzing her, so Amycus cursed his eyes out and set him on fire. Slytherin feuds were intense, but Severus had managed to keep possession of most of his body parts, except for his toenails, and his right leg that first time he’d walked into a mirror, and Evan Rosier had jinxed his nose off in second year--he wondered, briefly, how this had become normal, and had a sudden flash of sympathy for his fellows, muggle-raised wizardry.

“She’s tricking you,” the Baron declared. “The boy returned the diadem to the castle. He changed it here. You can find it in the Room of Hidden Things. I give you blood for blood: his blood is in the Room of Hidden Things.” With that, the Baron rattled his chains, rose into the air, and melted away. Severus regarded the tomb, the now-vanished remnants of unicorn blood, and filed the realization of blood sacrifice to the dead as something to research later. Sluggy might know something about it, he’d ask him later. For now, he had to meet Lily.

 

The rain was breaking by the time he slunk into the castle, disturb, mind stammering over blood for blood, the Baron’s proud confession--he started visibly when he saw the Grey Lady gliding down the Grand Staircase. Filch snickered at him, holding Mrs. Norris as usual.

“Watch your step, boy,” Filch said, “else you’ll trip over your own feet.” Snape scowled back. His feet had grown before his legs had quite made it; if he remembered correctly, he still had a few more inches to go, and maybe even more if he took supplemental nutritional potions, as Slughorn suggested, all those years ago. He quickly cast a cleaning charm, a wandless, wordless finger contortion, and swept away. Filch stared at him. Mrs. Norris meowed.

Most of the younger students were still in class, and the OWL and NEWT students were sequestered in their common rooms, the study halls, or the library. Severus kept a wary eye and wand out for marauding Gryffindors. He hadn’t tangled with Sirius Black since the initial incident by the lake; James Potter was keeping his word. Pettigrew never dared walk the halls by himself. Mulciber liked to hear him squeal too much. He stalked up the staircases, the stone murmuring at his feet, creaking as they moved him to different sections of the castle. Seven storeys in this old, sprawling castle: it was odd how empty it felt. Severus supposed the Founders thought there would be more children. Inbreeding, though, limited fertility, and he entertained thoughts of moving the entirety of the Wizarding UK within Hogwarts’ walls. He rounded the corner. Perhaps that was the plan, and what Slytherin meant: to move the entirety of British wizardry into one safe fortress. Of course that was not a very good idea, since this was Scotland--apocrypha had long distorted the facts. He was so lost in thought he missed the corridor and nearly walked right into Remus Lupin of all people, squinting at an old piece of parchment.

“Out,” he thundered, “of my way.”

“Well, excuse me, Snape,” Lupin said, hastily folding away the paper. Severus’ eyes narrowed: he had glimpsed sprawling lines, was that the paper he had attempted to confiscate all those years ago, from the Potter brat? No, there was such a thing as too much coincidence. He didn’t live in the strictures of a Chekhov play--it was almost definitely a red herring. “Uh--you wouldn’t happened to have seen Lily anywhere, would you?”

Severus raised a single eyebrow. A flash of deep, deep dislike shone in Lupin’s amber-wolf eyes. They stayed cold but his lips moved into a smile, slightly baring his teeth, which were oddly longer and sharper than one would assume. He walked away. Severus turned around to watch him leave, and did not blink until he saw him disappear down the stairs. Prolonged exposure had blunted his nerves, but he would never leave his back exposed to him. He rubbed his side, where an ugly scar lay, a remnant to that hand going clawed and grabbing him, sinking into his flesh before Potter’s Blasting Curse threw the half-morphed wolf back, grabbing him and running. It hadn’t been a deep cut, but still, it scarred. He realized his heart was beating very, very fast.

Wand out, on high alert, Severus turned into the corner. He obeyed Lily’s instructions, pacing in front of the that ridiculous tapestry, thinking, “I need a place to get away, I need a place to get away.” On his third round, the stone next to the tapestry melted away, revealing a simple wooden door. His nose twitched: cedar. He taped the doorknob suspiciously. It was lead, the magic-killer, odd. He twisted it, the lead tingling against his hand--there were wizards with lead allergies, made Potions brewing on the elementary level difficult-- and opened the door, stepping into the room and letting it shut behind him.

Lily was sitting, in a simple green sweater and jeans, on a bench of a cloister, in the center by the fountain. It was not one of Hogwarts’ many little cloisters, but modeled after one he recognized, he had seen it traveling with Lucie and the Malfoys one delirious summer, 1983, Certosa di San Martino, too much wine and the Mediterraneum on his tongue, Lucie shimmering in the Naples sun, no one could stay solemn, not even when they found the garden of skulls. This one did not have the skulls. Luna marble, serpentine, and even some red Aswan lay in the floor, spiralling stars. He walked through the arches and into the cloister proper. The garden was only an herb garden: rosemary, sage, thyme, he paused at some basil and rubbed its leaves. Lily continued to sit, looking at him nervously, playing with a book in her lap. The sun was strong but not dizzying.

“This is…” he trailed off. “Where is this?”

Lily shrugged. “Wizard space.”

“Clearly.”

“There might be something in the castle’s magic,” Lily said, her hands twisting over the book, “to keeps its residents from going insane. They let us out so rarely, they have to have enough little rooms and treasures to keep us from killing each other.”

Awkwardly Severus settled on the bench next to her. The marble wasn’t hot, despite the sun, and the water splashing from the fountain behind them was refreshing. “What are you reading?” There was a careful distance of two inches between them. It didn’t feel right. Lily smiled uncertainly and shrugged.

“On the Corporeality of the Soul,” she read, “and its Intermixture and Very Interchangeability of More Viscous Animate Matter. By Aquila Black. Just chasing a pet project.”

Severus made an interested sound; well, he was interested, beyond smoothing over the awkwardness. “So she’s refuting mind-body dualism?”

“No, she tries to set it up as a reductio ad absurdum but doesn’t quite hit the mark, you know wizards--she presupposes the duality in order to argue that their purpose and make is the same, but fails to release the assumption. She might’ve been more successful if she had ever learned first order logic.”

“We can’t have wizards being logical,” Severus said, “else magic would cease to work. How much of this,” he waved a hand at the cloister, “is held up by pure wilful belief?”

Lily snorted. “I can’t tell if you’re joking.” She nudged him. The world felt right again.

“I’m not, I’m not, I had...someone,” his face faded, “tell me that once, I can’t remember when.” He pressed his lips together anxiously, ran a thumb over them. “Things are getting--hazier.” Abruptly he occluded, withdrew into himself, and gathered the strands that made him: regret, bitterness, devotion. To whom, why, how? He needed to find his purpose. He closed his eyes and remembered that shade of Avada Kedavra green. He knew himself.

“Sev? I think you’re dissociating. You changed the room.”

Severus opened his eyes. “Occluding,” he corrected. They were now sitting in a leather loveseat, surrounded by massive towers of books and statues, stuffed dragons, the skeleton of a demiguise--all sorts of detritus. He looked at her. “Why am I here?”

Lily bit her lip. “A secret for a secret?” she offered. Severus resisted the impulse to bark are you asking me or telling me, Miss Evans? “Since I told yours, I thought I’d give you one of mine.” She leaned back. “So here we are. The Come and Go Room. I like to call it the Room of Hidden Things.”

“What?” His attention sharpened.

Lily shrugged, spread her hands out. “It hides things. Hides you, if you ask right. It does its best to give you what you want, though sometimes it’ll give you what you need instead. I come here and paint sometimes. Listen to muggle music. Wear muggle clothes without gettings points taken off for uniform infraction. It changes the layout too, depending on what you want. So if it’s snowing outside and dismal, I can step into sunny Naples, or Venice, and wander around and explore. I really do think it’s meant to keep people from going stir-crazy. At least, it does for me.”

Severus looked around, at the high bookshelves that towered before them. There must be fifteen hundred years’ worth of knowledge, hidden and obscured by the dust--and, the Baron said, one of the Dark Lord’s Horcruxes. He needed to report to Dumbledore.

“Sev?” Lily’s voice was tentative. He turned back. “So, what? Now what?” She bit her lip.

Severus regarded her silently, and sighed. “I can’t believe you managed to sneak into my dormitory. With Potter. And I didn’t get my head shoved into a toilet in the meantime.”

Lily’s eyes lit up. “Well, there was one moment I thought you’d catch me. But your friend Yatin’s very smooth, he’s good at sucking people in.”

“Yes.” He stood awkwardly in front of her.

Lily’s smile faded. “You know, there are other things I want to talk about.” Severus’ brow furrowed, but before he could snap at her defensively she held up a hand and continued, “more on what you were saying earlier. How everything’s confused. The timelines, I mean. Because I think they’re leaking.”

Severus stared at her. “What,” he said.

“It’s not just you and Dumbledore who are starting to remember things,” she said. “You said I died, and Potter? And Marlene and Benjy too?”

“And almost everyone we went to school with,” Snape said, “but what the hell do you mean? I haven’t seen any evidence of that amongst the Slytherins, you’re being ridiculous. There is absolutely no way these two dimensions can be so porous, the Veil’s the only way through--” he stopped dead. How many times had he walked between dimensions, just with some blood, a couple roots, and a mirror and a candle? He closed his eyes. Had he managed to undermine the net between the worlds so badly? “Fuck.”

“I caught Marlene singing the Beatles in the shower, but Mary and I have never played them around her, and we’re the only muggleborns she talks to. There’s no way she could’ve known, but then when I asked her, she told me I’d played them for her at my house, last summer. Except that never happened. But she said it was after you and I had fought, and then got confused, and then changed the subject. And Benjy’s been getting panicky every time he sees Avery, did you notice? Potter’s been distant towards Remus, even more than usual. And I--well, I’ve been having these dreams.” She paused. “How’d you think I could draw the--the baby?”

“You’ve always had a fertile imagination,” Severus said, and regretted the pun.

“Not to mention the nightmares about green light. And--are you really quite sure I had sex with Potter?”

Severus got huffy. He folded his arms. “Black likes to paint me as some obsessed stalker, but believe me, I moved the hell on and didn’t see you again except at my dad’s funeral, Merlin, it’s not like I had the will or sick curiosity to peep on your wedding night.”

“Kinky,” Lily giggled. “But really--what happened at your dad’s funeral?”

“We fought.” Severus looked away. “Rather violently.”

Lily touched her hair. “Was that it?”

“Yes,” Severus lied. “Why? You know you’ve always had weird dreams.” She didn’t need to know she’d punched him so hard she fractured his cheekbone when she saw the Dark Mark, or that he’d then shoved her off the couch, both their pants still down, and cut her hair--he didn’t want to hurt her, just to shame her--so she’d kicked him in the balls and he’d thrown a lamp at her. The last exchange they’d had went along the lines of: “Well, you were a shitty lay anyway, you frigid bitch!” “Fuck you, you limp-dicked Nazi!” And then she had slammed the door shut, and he had picked his trousers up. Oh, to be nineteen again--shit, he was going to be nineteen again.

Lily regarded him suspiciously. “I have a distinct memory of being furious with you for shaving my head.”

“You’ve always had weird dreams,” Severus said firmly. He raised an eyebrow. “Do you really think I’d be capable of such violence?”

“Uh, no fucking shit Sev, you joined the Death Eaters, you prick.” Lily shook her head. “You’re terrible at protesting innocence, you know? Even when you’re innocent.”

“It’s because I’m ambiguously ethnic,” Severus deadpanned. “Racist.”

“Oy, I am not being racist!” Lily protested. “You’re being an ass.”

Severus stared her down. “Racist.” This was such a great diversion, he should use this on her more often--but not often enough, he had to actually hold her accountable, she was never very good at being called in.

She got up. “Fine, fine.” She shrugged. “So what do you want to say?”

A tinge of hysteria seized him suddenly. The room changed, shifted into something like his old quarters, warm and wooden on the ground floor bordering the Lake. Lily started up as the bench she was sitting on abruptly contorted into a chaise longue. The room contracted, narrowed, the shelves disappeared and became his cabinets of books and notes, and Severus was standing before a familiar fireplace, the fire crackling merrily. He started to laugh. “This is all so fucking bizarre, an absolute nightmare, I never had any desire to relive any of this, I just wanted to atone for my mistake, I don’t want a second chance--”

“Uh,” Lily said. She looked up to the ceiling. “I need something that will help me calm him down.” Between them, a table with a full tea platter popped into existence. A battered copy of Sense & Sensibility lay on the table. They exchanged a glance. “Jane Austen?”

“She’s very interesting from a Marxist lens,” Sev said defensively. Then Lily snorted, and he found himself smiling, and finally he settled for the tea, companionably ordering her to move over.

 

Severus was about three chapters into his book, and Lily reclining against him--it was perfectly fine for friends to be this close, they had always been like this--with her weighty philosophical text, when suddenly she stretched herself up and said, “So I think we should try to take down Voldemort now, rather than wait for him to kill us. Because I would rather not die.”

“It’s more complicated than that,” Severus said.

“What, have you tried shooting him?”

Severus briefly imagined Lily holding an AK47 and AK’ing Death Eaters--death, doom, destruction, now that was a good pun. Pity she was the only one who would get it. “No, but…” he hesitated.

“What?”

“Dumbledore says--”

“No offense, Sev, but Dumbledore’s a bit slow on the uptake,” Lily said skeptically. “Remember Grindelwald? He’s always overcautious, he could challenge Voldemort to a duel right now and we know he’d win--”

“Do not patronize Albus Dumbledore,” Severus said harshly. “You have no conception what he sacrificed in this war and how many lives he is saving, in his ‘apparent inaction’. Albus is still answerable to the Wizengamot, and the International Confederacy of Wizardry--he is preventing an outright civil war. By treating the Death Eaters as an extremist movement, he’s denying them the right to an open field of battle--which would inevitably take place at Hogwarts, this is the most important magical edifice in the Wizarding United Kingdom--”

“Fine,” Lily snapped. “I stand corrected. But meanwhile, people are dying, I’m going to die if we keep on like this, Marlene too and Benjy and how many others, Sev, you said almost everyone we went to Hogwarts with. It’s not like he’s immortal--” Severus looked away, looked for the teapot. “Oh Christ, he is immortal, isn’t he? How the fuck did he manage that? Steal a Philosopher’s Stone?”

“Ah,” Severus said. “Well, currently that is what Albus and I are attempting to figure out, and if we knew the answer, Lily, believe me, we’d be acting on it, you think I like knowing everyone I grew up with is doomed to die? Every time I fucking wake up, I see Evan--I saw him die, you know, the aurors ripped him to pieces, but he’d walked into the Leaky and started shooting curses, he must’ve wanted it to happen--it was only me and Avery left, and I know how Wilkes turned out, I used to visit him in Azkaban--you think I like knowing what kind of monsters they are, they’re turning into?”

“Then let’s fucking stop it!” Lily shouted “We need to figure out a way to stop it!”

Suddenly the room shifted again, and both of them were thrown to the floor as the walls suddenly rushed in, shooting upward. The light turned harsh, the floors blanked. Severus grabbed at his wand, rapidly going through spells, what would be applicable, contorto only worked on organic material, a blasting curse might work, and finally he shouted, “Locomotor mortis!” Everything stilled. He peeled himself off the floor. He had knocked his knee falling, but his new leggings were still pristine. Lily said slowly, “Sometimes I hate magic.”

He glanced over to her. She was carefully picking herself up, a bruise forming along her chin. He helped her up gently. “Be careful what you wish for,” he said. He scrutinized the bruise. “I can heal that for you.”

Lily waved a hand. “Go ahead.”

He traced around the bruise with his thumb, chanting, “Cicatrem sanem.” She shivered as the bruise faded, capillaries healing, blood retreated. Abruptly he dropped his hand. Both of them drew their wands. At the end of the new narrow corridor was a small marble plinth, and atop it was a tarnished silver circlet, inlaid with sapphires. He drew in a quick, short breath. “Ravenclaw’s lost diadem,” he whispered, and quickly he walked towards it.

“Sev, wait!” Lily rushed after him. She grabbed his sleeve before he could touch it. “You have your gloves, right?” He stared at her, confused, and then swore suddenly. He stepped back and occluded so hard his knees almost buckled, withdrawing so swiftly into his mind he left his body behind.

“It’s cursed,” he murmured, “it’s got a cursed aura.” He lifted his wand, levitated the diadem carefully. It was making his nose itch. He willed himself not to sneeze. He examined the spell patina carefully: the rose of an Entrapment Charm, the laundry-water gray of a Confundus, the more insidious black grain of suggestibility, blue watermarks to open the mind, and underneath all that, something slithering below the surface, but concentrated in the gem. He narrowed his eyes. “Reveal your secrets!” Light erupted from the sapphire, hissing heat, and Severus dropped the levitation while Lily threw up a shield. He screamed, unable to see.

Whiteness faded into greyish forms; from a shelf a humanoid blob wrested a shining stick--a sword--and rapidly Lily struck at the blinding diadem. Severus blinked rapidly, rubbed his eyes, but could only distinguish the vaguest of forms. He could hear the Horcrux screech, in its death throws, as Lily whacked at it again and again. As the silver wrent and tore, Severus’ vision returned. Eventually the metal just crumbled into itself and ashed. Lily cast aguamenti and washed the gray smear away. The sapphire remained. 

“Don’t touch that,” Lily said tersely, breathing hard, sword at her side.

“Do I look like I have a death wish?” he said, rubbing at his light-spotted eyes.

“Do you want me to answer that?” Breathing heavily, Lily sat down, sword clattering. It was dripping a thick, mucous liquid between mud and blood. “Fuck.” Severus came closer, and still squinting, examined the sword. The pommel ended in a boldly real lion roaring with a ruby in its mouth, rubies for its eyes, goblin-wrought. It thrummed with magic, and upon closer inspection runes swarmed upon and within the hilt: Odin’s sign, for resurrection, healing, coming when needed. His lips thinned into a sneer. It was Gryffindor’s sword, he remembered it from its place of honor at the Headmaster’s Office. Like mother, like son. He could’ve told anyone the boy got everything good about himself from Lily. A quarter of dragonskin suddenly appeared by his hand. He took it and wiped the blade: scratches blazoned into a Times New Roman GODRIC GRYFFINDOR on the steel.

“We need to tell Albus,” he said. 

Lily had her eyes closed, and was breathing heavily, leaning against a shelf that helpfully became cushioned. Paisley, Severus observed, purple paisley: it clashed horribly with her hair. It flashed into a more pleasing green. Lily panted, “Can’t--I have--my heart attack first?”

“No.”


End file.
